


the promise of the seasons

by camicazi



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst with a Happy Ending, Best Friends, Eventual Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, Plants, alexa play little fucking things by 1d, idiots to lovers, if ure reading this at ass hours in the morning i apologize in advance, vague mean girls reference, when i say angst i mean that shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:53:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25868479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/camicazi/pseuds/camicazi
Summary: Korea has always had four distinct seasons—spring, summer, fall, and winter—bringing along their promises of change.Despite this, Chanyeol and Kyungsoo have always been best friends, holding on to promises of their own.When an unstoppable force acts upon an immovable object, one of them has to give.
Relationships: Do Kyungsoo | D.O/Park Chanyeol
Comments: 77
Kudos: 188
Collections: Oh Lovely Day Fest Round 2 (2020)





	1. winter

**Author's Note:**

> written for: [the oh lovely day fest round 2] [prompt LD104]
> 
> 8-27-2020
> 
> this work shares a lot of overlap with another work written for chankai (Some Things Last a Long Time by strange_seas). This fic was inspired by it--along with "there, nestled against his pulse" by hiuythn and "with quiet words i'll lead you in" by strikinglight (both from the klance fandom). links on the end notes! 
> 
> [^^This has been the action strange_seas suggested for me to take, for proof please check our comment thread on her fic.]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi! please be reminded that the spaces—there will be long ones—are consistent and intentional <3

It's the winter of freshman year, snow still only a mere promise whispered between concerned parents, when Choi Jihye takes up residence in the corners of his mind. 

The beginnings of the beach pop up by the road, buildings thinning out to make way for rocks and stretches of sand. 

“Kyungsoo."

Chanyeol tightens his grip on the steering wheel, heat blasting in his face.

“I like this girl.”

Their route twists and turns, further away from the metro. The both of them are just as familiar with it as the road is with their car, owing to their years of late-night trips and winter break outings.

“Hm?” Kyungsoo blinks up from his screen. Chanyeol watches him stretch out of the corner of his eye, his jacket too big on Kyungsoo’s shoulders.

“Sorry—what did you say, Yeol?”

“I like this girl,” he repeats. He lowers the volume on the radio, some jingle for Christmas playing on the station. “Choi Jihye. You know her?”

"I guess," Kyungsoo hums, the telltale signs of his best friend’s inattentiveness appearing through the phone he keeps flipping in his hand. "She’s in a lot of my classes.”

“I want to ask her out next weekend.”

The phone slips from Kyungsoo’s fingers, rattling to the carpet with a thud.

The thought is strangely endearing—Chanyeol’s seen Kyungsoo twirl the slightest of pens into the most complicated of tricks, and his rare displays of clumsiness have become even rarer when they entered college.

“You should.” Kyungsoo bends down to pick it up, shrugging off Chanyeol's jacket in the process. “She seems loud. Exactly your type.” 

“I have a type? What is it?”

“Tall,” Kyungsoo eyes at some permanent spot on the window. “Pretty. Uses blush on her cheeks like her life depends on it.”

Usually, there’s an easy tone to go with his words—but now they’re empty, biting, like he didn't have the energy to bother.

Kyungsoo closes his eyes, an almost-frown settling across his mouth.

He takes a deep breath in, sigh filling the silence, mingling along the steady thrum of the car’s engine.

“Hey, are you feeling okay?”

Kyungsoo opens an eye when a hand rests across his forehead. 

“You know, I’d be touched, but you’re probably just worried no one will cook rice for you later.”

Chanyeol narrows his eyes. He curls his fingers to flick him right between the brows, smiling a bit at the whine he gets from his best friend.

“I’m serious.”

Kyungsoo rubs at the spot, giving him A Look. 

“I’m sleepy, you big oaf. Concentrate on the road so you don’t kill us.” Another breath, long and tired. “Tell me about Jihye.”

Chanyeol sneaks in another temperature check before he does, the back of his hand cold against Kyungsoo's neck.

He talks to Kyungsoo about her voice.

How her long hair fluttered in the hallways, lips always seeming to be at the edge of a smile, their playful lilt almost as graceful as the way she moved.

He’d seen her play the guitar at a scheduled jamming session, and he’d fallen.

Hard.

“She’s so attractive,” Chanyeol whines, “especially when she sings.”

Kyungsoo offers him a small smile.

He hasn’t said anything yet, only humming along, agreeing when he needed to. “She’s a good match, Yeol. You should date.”

He turns his face away, leaning further into the chair. Chanyeol almost thinks he's asleep, but—“tell me about the guitar you’ve been drooling over.”

The guitar is much easier. 

Music, after all, came first before most things.

Chanyeol has dragged Kyungsoo into the quaint little shop to stare at it more times than he’d care to count, and the owner might as well know him by now.

The thing is burned into his memory—he rattles off, throwing out detail by detail in a speech Kyungsoo probably already knew.

It’s a few moments after he finishes that he realizes Kyungsoo’s stopped agreeing, stopped asking questions.

He looks over, and his best friend is asleep, a softer tilt to his lips.

Chanyeol is twelve years old.

“Do you remember Kyungsoo?”

He looks up from Toben, curled around his lap, fur falling to the floor. 

“The one from sixth grade?” 

“No,” his mother _tsks_ , slapping his shoulder in an attempt to get him out of the rug. “The one we’d always meet at parks.”

Chanyeol doesn’t know why his mother expects him to remember—

—but he thinks he can; memories of wide eyes and mint choco chip ice cream, balloons under spring petals and puppies running across autumn piles.

“They moved in next door.”

“Okay,” Chanyeol dismisses. He goes back to playing with their toy poodle. “So?”

“So,” his mother says, loading some soup in a container, “I want you to make friends with their son, keep an eye on him.”

Chanyeol’s brows furrow. 

Yoora’s arrival from class is announced by the creak of their mesh door, and Toben skitters, jumping out of his arms. 

His mother senses his question. “It’s hard, Channie, moving to new places." She closes the Tupperware with a snap, placing it inside a paper bag. "I just thought he’d need a friend.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all.”

“It’s not all,” Chanyeol says, looking up at his mother, taking the hot soup in her hands. 

He sees a purse in the older woman’s lips, the tenseness of her shoulders. “His mother, Naeun—she was my best friend, back when we were young. We promised to look after each other’s kids if ever…”

The unspoken words hang between them.

_Naeun is gone now._

“I loved her very much, Chanyeol. This is the least I can do. You’ll understand when you’re older.”

At sunset, his mother makes him and Yoora deliver the soup.

There's a bare path leading up to their neighbor’s door, the property looking empty without Mrs. Jeong's flowers and garden gnomes.

It opens up to reveal a disheveled boy—hair falling across his forehead, shirt rumpled from sleep.

His voice is as thin as his hands that close around the tupperware. “Thanks—uh—”

"Yoora," his sister smiles. "Nice to have you. This is my brother. Chanyeol, say hi." 

The door opens wider to reveal a man, clad in a polo shirt and glasses.

He smiles, warm and welcoming, and insists that they wait for some Japanese treats to bring back home.

It’s faint, but Chanyeol hears his favorite band playing over some speakers from inside the house.

The boy stands at the doorway, not really knowing what to do with himself.

Chanyeol knew the feeling well. 

So he asks what his favorite songs are, and it’s like a switch—the boy lights up, voice clearing as he talks about music.

Contrary to what their close friends believed, neither Kyungsoo nor Chanyeol came up with their tradition of going to the beach every winter.

It was Yoora that had planted it—

—suggesting off-handedly one high school night that if the duo hated the commotion on the beach so much during the summer, they might as well go during winter.

Her point of _don’t complain if that’s how things are_ had been lost in translation.

It was Kyungsoo’s father that nurtured it—

—offering to drive them there, treating them to reservations at some homestay, and picking them up right after.

A single father with money and a worrisome heart could go a long way, after all.

Their first night, they have samgyupsal at the homestay’s back porch, far enough away from the shoreline for the fire to thrive, but near enough for them to watch the waves crash and foam on the sand.

They were fifteen back then—all gangly legs and awkward haircuts.

Nothing else had mattered apart from the movie they were watching under the blanket fort they’d made, and somehow they ended up promising to make it a yearly thing. 

Sometimes, they’d bring their friends along during trips in the summer, Baekhyun and Jongin and Sehun, and it would be louder and merrier.

But it’s the ones where it would be only the two of them between bottles of soju that Chanyeol held close—

—the first weekend of December belonged to them and them only. 

Now on their sixth year, Chanyeol shakes Kyungsoo’s shoulder, retrieving a familiar weight from his pocket. 

“Soo. Wake up. We’re here.”

They've been such loyal customers to the homestay that the owner had given them their own separate keys, though Chanyeol often teased that it was because she was just trying to set her niece up with Kyungsoo.

This time, they cook samgyettang, falling into inside jokes, talking across fairy lights and fluffy pillows.

In truth, it didn’t matter what they talked about. 

It was more a chance to fill in their quota for skinship—their trips are one of the few events that Kyungsoo lets Chanyeol be clingy all he wants.

His best friend would never admit it, but Chanyeol knows Kyungsoo doesn't particularly mind his overly-affectionate tendencies.

“Because you get too smug when I let you do it,” he’d reasoned, when Chanyeol had pointed out that he was basically a koala with everyone else except him. 

In the soft humdrum of night, Chanyeol can’t help but go back to their conversation in the car.

The movie in front of them has long been forgotten, both of them having descended into a space of comfort, the heaviness of their bodies a familiar weight against each other.

“What’s your type, then?” Chanyeol asks. “I don’t think I’ve figured it out.”

Kyungsoo’s fingers still from where they’ve been carding through his hair.

It's then that concern, cultivated through eight years of friendship, shoots through him.

Chanyeol pulls away, head almost bumping into the pole keeping their blanket tent up. 

Kyungsoo’s anxiety presented itself in his fingers—albeit not in a usual way—he’d know when Kyungsoo’s fingers would cut themselves off from their constant energy, a constant thrumming Chanyeol has ingrained into his mind. 

Apart from that one girl in high school, Kyungsoo hasn’t expressed much interest to anyone else, only satisfying Chanyeol’s rants and pining sessions with supporting grunts and opinions.

“Actually,” Kyungsoo croaks out, voice rough from who-knows-how-long of not talking. “I’ve been wanting to tell you.” 

His best friend’s eyes are tight—

—teeth biting on his bottom lip.

It’s not that Chanyeol hasn’t seen Kyungsoo so nervous before. 

Chanyeol is one of the few people that Kyungsoo lets himself become vulnerable around, and despite the calm and cold exterior he showed others, Kyungsoo could transform into a ball of nerves when things got bad.

And now, Kyungsoo is looking at Chanyeol like he’s ready for rejection, as if Chanyeol’s going to grow claws and attack him the next second.

“Soo,” Chanyeol reaches out, ignoring Kyungsoo’s slight flinch as he holds the other boy’s fingertips. “What is it? Tell me. I’m here.”

“I—“ Kyungsoo swallows hard, equal amounts of anxiety and resolve on his face. “I’m gay.”

The words drift between them, their finality mingling with the sound of waves crashing against the shore. 

Chanyeol can hear his heartbeat in his ears.

Kyungsoo’s eyes are wide and worried, face crumpling bit by bit at Chanyeol’s silence.

“My type is men,” he starts to say, but he chokes on a sob, chokes on the words he thinks Chanyeol is about to spit, legs moving to stand.

Chanyeol wraps his arms around him before he can. 

He holds on tight, not letting go, not until Kyungsoo finally deflates against his shoulder.

“I love you,” Chanyeol says. “You’re my best friend, Kyungsoo. Nothing will change that. Do you understand? Hey. Nothing will change. I promise.”

He repeats it, over and over, _I promise I promise I promise,_ until Kyungsoo’s breathing evens out and their fairy lights turn themselves off.

“I thought you’d get mad.” Kyungsoo finally speaks. “I’ve known for years now, but I was still in denial—“ he chokes again, and Chanyeol pulls him in tighter.

“Why would I be mad? Thank you for trusting me.”

There’s something manifesting in the space where their bodies touch, a sliver of brightness Chanyeol refuses to acknowledge, for the sake of both of them.

“Some things will change,” Kyungsoo tries to joke. “You’ll have to hear me pine about guys now.”

The sliver has made its way up his spine, tired of being ignored for so many years.

Chanyeol chuckles. “You better tell me when you like someone.” 

The idea falls flat, empty.

“They’ll need my approval.”

A week after he meets his soft-spoken neighbor, Chanyeol finds out through his mother that their sports clinics—judo and basketball, occurred in the same gym.

At her behest, they start walking home after practice, one always waiting for the other, no matter how late it got.

“It’s safer,” Kyungsoo had insisted at first, picking at some imaginary lint on his training pants, until it had transitioned into “it’s better,” rolling his eyes at Chanyeol’s teasing.

“Aw, you like me now.”

They stop to eat takoyaki on the way home, and Chanyeol can’t help but grin at his jokes, his playfulness complementing Chanyeol’s in a way that could only be achieved by an opposite.

Eventually, they find each other in their classrooms, sticking together “like pot-stickers,” as his mother said.

His teammates eventually learn to recognize the wide-eyed boy from the dojo waiting on the bleachers, and Kyungsoo’s coach lists Chanyeol as an additional contact in case of injury. 

They form the barest of languages—all taps and eyebrow raises and stares—but the fact that they have one at all has pride settling nicely on Chanyeol's lips. 

The day before winter break, Chanyeol finally gets the courage to ask Jihye out.

He approaches her at lunch, putting on a smile that he knows shows off his dimples.

“Mind if I sit?”

Jihye smiles back, doe-eyes sending butterflies to his gut.

They speak at the same time—

“You wanna go for coffee after class?”

“Oppa, do you have plans later?”

—and they laugh. 

They agree on a café near university, quaint and popular, with enough students to take notice of their date, but also enough for them to blend in among the groups and couples.

Chanyeol can’t help but want to make Jihye giggle; can’t help but want to see her eyes light up whenever they talk about music and instruments and lessons.

“I really like you, Chanyeol.” Jihye looks at him from under her lashes, hands delicate around her cup. Her face shines in the fading sunlight. “I hope you like me too.”

Everything about her is so, so, pretty—strong and shimmering.

“That’s a given, don’t you think?”

Chanyeol extends their time together, wanting to go near an ice cream parlor next, and then Jihye drags him to the park for an early-night walk under the lights.

Chanyeol misses training.

They meet more around campus, Jihye sitting beside him during classes and striking up conversation in the hallways.

Sometimes, Chanyeol is alone, and he ignores the analog clocks in the lobbies that signal to him that he’s late. 

He almost skips a class one time just to talk to her, but Jihye catches him with _tsk,_ something akin to scolding flashing across her features.

“Go to class.” 

“I lost track of time,” Chanyeol winks, feeling smug at the blush that creeps along Jihye’s cheeks. “Text me when you’re done.” 

Sometimes, Chanyeol has Kyungsoo by his side, and Jihye will greet them both.

“Hi, Kyungsoo-oppa.” 

Her smile is like rain on a hot summer day.

She gets along with Kyungsoo—she has a brother on the judo varsity team, and it makes Chanyeol happy to see her tease him.

As soon as they start chatting though, Kyungsoo will excuse himself, too polite for them to argue at his departure.

Once, Jihye hints at wanting to try a new restaurant downtown, having read about it online. 

The suggestion doesn’t last three seconds in the air before Kyungsoo makes to leave, citing a study group in a few minutes.

“What are you talking about? You’re free, I know your schedule. Come eat with us.”

“I can’t,” Kyungsoo insists, “I promised to help them with gastro, the chemistry part is hard.”

“Who’s they?” Chanyeol tries, but Kyungsoo is already backing away, hand running through his hair.

“A few classmates.”

He smiles nicely at Jihye.

“Have fun.”

And then he’s gone.

Chanyeol is thirteen years old.

“We should have nicknames.”

He’s enjoying the cookie Kyungsoo packed for him, the cold night breeze, and the quiet of the empty tennis court.

“Do we need them?”

Kyungsoo eyes the crumbs that fall on his training pants. He sweeps them away, white v-neck loosely dipping around his collarbones.

“Why not?” Chanyeol leans against the bleachers. “It would be fun.”

In truth, it's because freshman year of high school has them meeting new people, and Chanyeol can’t help the possessiveness that curls around his skin whenever Kyungsoo talks about Jongin’s humor.

Or Baekhyun’s wittiness.

Or Sehun’s snarky attitude.

He hopes his friend doesn’t catch on it. Insecurity was never something Chanyeol handled well. 

“Which drama did you watch again?”

Kyungsoo narrows his eyes, kimchi rice falling neatly to the box container. 

There isn’t a single speck on his shirt.

“Kyungie?” Chanyeol tries anyway, laughing at how the other boy cringes. 

The names are ridiculous, and he takes it as a challenge. “Kyungja. Kyung-kyung. Sookyung.”

“Wait!” Chanyeol shouts, avoiding a half-hearted slap to the face, “Soo.”

Kyungsoo stops in his assault, and it’s enough to give Chanyeol traction.

“It’s perfect,” Chanyeol grins, “isn’t it? Soo.”

Kyungsoo looks like he wants to protest.

“Yeollie for you then.”

Chanyeol curls his nose.

“Chan-chan.” There’s a grin to match Chanyeol’s on Kyungsoo’s lips. “Channie? YeolChan. See how stupid it sounds?”

Chanyeol pouts, the one he used to get his way. They’re barely two months apart—but most times, it feels like Kyungsoo is so much older. 

“Yeol.” Kyungsoo finally relents, their names twisting and turning around them. 

Chanyeol says it as much as he can on the way home, as if repeating it enough times can solidify his top place among Kyungsoo’s list of friends. 

Chanyeol starts spending his nights in front of his phone—

—Jihye’s number becomes his favorite notification, and they spend hours chatting on Line. 

He’ll text her asking about one thing or the other, and Jihye will respond with some funny incident that it reminds her of. 

She’ll share links to videos and memes, and he falls asleep smiling more nights that he cares to admit.

Jihye is easy to talk to—she’s bright, bold, just like Chanyeol, and their shared interests for music has them going out to all kinds of band showings and concerts.

They make their relationship official sometime around the end of December, when their end-of-the-year game has Jihye leaning in to press a kiss on Chanyeol’s cheeks in front of a crowd.

Chanyeol is fourteen years old.

“Can I ask you something?”

It’s the train ride part of their routine going home, and Chanyeol isn’t sure if the question is allowed between them.

“How did your mother die?”

Kyungsoo tenses, fingers stilling against the rail, and Chanyeol shrinks; he didn’t mean for it to sound so blunt.

“Sorry.” There’s regret churning in Chanyeol’s gut, amplified by the hurt that flashes across Kyungsoo's face. “Forget I said anything.”

“No,” Kyungsoo clears his throat, “it’s alright. I was just surprised, Yeol.”

Still, Chanyeol stays cautious. 

“It’s not my business. Obviously, you don’t have to—if you’re uncomfortable.“

For a while, there's silence, all too heavy.

“Cancer.” Kyungsoo’s voice is soft, but the word cuts through the steady hum of the train machinations.

“Breast cancer. We tried our best, you know? She even tried preparing me for it when I'd walk in on her chemo sessions. I was there when she died.”

Chanyeol is grateful for the last-minute meeting their coach gave them, delaying their departure. 

The last ride from Apgujeong was always the emptiest, and so there’s almost no people to see Kyungsoo’s face crumple into a sob.

“I’m sorry.” Chanyeol takes Kyungsoo into his arms, letting him hide his face into his shoulder. “It’s alright. You can cry if you want. I’m big enough to cover you.”

It lasts a short while—Kyungsoo shuddering into his skin, and they have six stations more to go before he pushes himself off of Chanyeol.

His eyes are red, but there is no wetness on his cheeks, nothing dropping against Chanyeol’s clothes.

“I’m okay,” although Kyungsoo sounds like he’s trying to convince himself. “I’m okay.”

“Do you miss her?” 

“Yes. Very much.”

An idea comes to Chanyeol’s mind; gentle and soft. He doesn't want to aggravate things, but—

“Tell me about her.”

There's a beat, and Chanyeol almost starts to think he's crossed a line.

“Why?”

“I want to meet her.” Chanyeol bunches his hands together, pretending not to notice how Kyungsoo's eyes watched the points where they fingers met. 

“Even if it’s through your memories. Maybe we can bring her back for a short while.”

Kyungsoo stares at him, eyes a deep pool of something Chanyeol can’t comprehend.

And then he starts telling Chanyeol about the woman with hands that loved making dumplings, with eyes that were sharp whenever they’d go to the market to buy ingredients for cooking.

Mechanically at first, almost like he’s reciting something, but at some point, he huffs out a smile, and Chanyeol wants to keep the bittersweet tone in his mind forever.

The first time he and Jihye decide to have sex, the decision is the only thing rushed about it.

Jihye traces her tongue along the ridge of Chanyeol’s teeth, pushing him to the wall of their dorm room.

“Bed,” Chanyeol breathes out, clearing her hair back. Jihye is making all sorts of sounds at the lips that land on her collarbone, on her neck. 

Chanyeol’s learned that it was never like the movies—but he’d be damned if he didn’t try to make it good for Jihye’s first time. 

Right as her hands travel down to his hips, she excuses herself to freshen up, nervous and perfect, and Chanyeol can only raise his eyebrows as she scurries out to their shared bathroom.

He rummages through his nightstand—and feels a spike of panic.

He texts Baekhyun for condoms.

_bbh92: underwear drawer_

_bbh92: the left one_

He hurries over to Baekhyun’s room, and comes back just as another text pops up on the screen.

_bbh92: where the fuck have you been?_

_pcyeol: where do you think I’ve been?_

_bbh92: congratulations asshole hope the pussy was worth it_

“The hell is that about,” he mutters, until Jihye’s lips capture his, and he tosses his phone on the nightstand. 

The night ends with Jihye in his arms, Chanyeol tracing circles on her back. 

He hasn’t come yet, but that was for another day. He’d had fun eating her out, anyway.

He falls asleep with his weight on her, hair tickling his face.

“Sorry, Yeol. I can’t. I’m busy.”

The words strike Chanyeol into silence.

He doesn’t hear them from Kyungsoo too often.

They’re outside their favorite takoyaki stand, the winter winds harsh against his cheeks. He feels like he might turn into ice.

“What? But the day before winter break ends is ours.”

Just like the first weekend of December.

Just like the first day of summer.

“We watched the fireworks yesterday, though.” Kyungsoo stares at a spot on the sidewalk, hair flying in every direction.

“We spent the day in your kitchen, and then the night holed up in your room.”

“Yes,” Chanyeol stutters out, “I know that. I was there. Why would you make plans without me?”

“I thought you had other plans yourself.” Kyungsoo rubs his gloved hands together, breath puffing up in front of his face.

“You know, dinner. With Jihye.”

A furrow forms in the middle of Chanyeol’s brows. He feels a stab of betrayal making its way up his spine.

“No, I didn’t.”

He tries to ruffle Kyungsoo’s hair for some lightness, but the other boy squirms out of his reach.

“Just make some excuses or something. You’ve never had problems ditching for me before.”

Somehow, his teasing falls flat, carried away by the flurries of snow. 

“Can we go inside, Yeol?” Kyungsoo shivers, motioning for Chanyeol to make his way inside the eatery. “I’m starving.”

The warm hiss of steam coming from the odeng and tteokbeokki is a reprieve on both their faces, noses tipped red from the cold.

“She hasn't told you yet, but she’s treating you somewhere.” Kyungsoo settles in front of him, a strange weight behind his voice.

“She asked for my help setting it up, we spent all week planning, I assumed you knew. Act surprised when she tells you, okay?”

Chanyeol doesn’t let it distract him. 

“Do something with me before dinner, then.”

“I can’t,” Kyungsoo repeats quietly. “I promised to go on this museum tour with Junmyeon-hyung. It’s supposed to take all day.”

Kyungsoo’s lips purse into a thin line. “You know how I hate flaking on people.”

“But you flaked on me,” Chanyeol whines out, ignoring the small flinch Kyungsoo has at his words. The name finally catches up to him.

“Kim Junmyeon? Golden boy Kim Junmyeon?”

“He hates being called that.” Kyungsoo’s mouth twists into something like a genuine smile. “How do you know him?”

“I don’t,” Chanyeol says lowly. “I know they say he’s spoiled, though. Rich family, cold to people he doesn’t like.”

“Yup,” Kyungsoo sounds amused now, but only barely, like he’s groping for any other topic, “that’s him.”

“How do _you_ know him?”

“He asked me to sing some of his compositions.” 

Kyungsoo thanks the waitress as bowls of tteokbeokki settle on the table.

Like the homestay, they’ve been patrons for long enough to unlock certain privileges, one of which was not needing to order at all, unless they wanted to deviate from their regular.

“Said that he could ask around for some assistant jobs for me at fancy restaurants in exchange.”

Chanyeol chews slowly, the rice cakes not quite settling properly on his tongue. “Will Sehun come along? Jongin?”

“No,” Kyungsoo continues, controlled, “just the two of us. We have a lot in common. He’s really nice too.”

The way he says it, shy and quiet, has Chanyeol feeling strangely left out—like there’s some secret he can’t know.

The betrayal finds a spot in his chest, sudden and irrational, curling up between his ribs. 

“I thought _we_ had a lot in common too. Being your best friend and all.”

The words hang in the air, silence grabbing at everything they left unsaid.

“Chanyeol,” Kyungsoo exhales, “don’t be like that.”

“At least tell me if it’s a date kind of thing.”

“Would it make you feel better if it were?”

“I don’t know,” Chanyeol answers, frustrated now. “It would make me feel better if I knew why you’d suddenly forget about something we’ve been doing for years.”

“You’re not being fair, Yeol.” 

“I don’t understand,” Chanyeol mutters. The hurt finally seeps into his syllables. “Why would you make plans without me?”

Kyungsoo’s eyebrows crease, like he’s trying his best not to get angry.

Out of the two of them, Kyungsoo always was the one people relied on to stay calm. 

“I wouldn’t have agreed if I didn’t know about Jihye’s plans. She was so excited, and she wanted to make you happy. I figured she’d want you all to herself all day.”

The stone to Chanyeol’s fire.

“Why does it feel like you’re using Jihye to get out of this?”

“You’re being a hypocrite,” Kyungsoo attempts to smooth out his words, but can’t help the bite escaping his mouth, “stop it, please.”

“Me?” Chanyeol shakes his head. “What have I forgotten?“

There’s a beat—and then Kyungsoo takes in a deep breath through his nostrils. 

His strained expression tells Chanyeol of defeat—the one that appeared whenever his anger made way for something colder.

“My application exam.” Kyungsoo wavers, and then looks at Chanyeol with a stony expression. “You didn’t show up.”

The knowledge hits him like a landslide.

The way Kyungsoo says it makes it all the more harsher—Chanyeol thinks it would have been better if he had shouted the words instead of whispering them; made Chanyeol rear back instead of lean in.

“It’s okay,” Kyungsoo's tone is patient, almost like he’s talking to a child. “It’s over, anyway. I’m just saying. Maybe you can cut me some slack too.”

He brings his chopsticks down, and Kyungsoo makes it to the door before Chanyeol jolts, leaving cash on the counter and running after him.

Chanyeol’s hand dwarfs Kyungsoo’s wrist.

He’s about to beg, go down on his knees at the look Kyungsoo gives him—because it’s not angry at all.

It’s disappointed. 

Kyungsoo had worried to him for months over that application exam—months of reassurance and encouragement from Chanyeol’s side, because if he won a scholarship, he’d get a chance to train under a special program in Japan.

He’d only submitted it because Chanyeol had promised to be there the day of the test, where they needed to cook in front of a board of judges.

“Like MasterChef,” he’d joked back then, “I’m sure the judges only look intimidating anyway. I’ll intimidate them back, if you want.” 

“It’s okay,” Kyungsoo interrupts his thinking. The forced smile Kyungsoo plasters on feels like a sharp slap in the face. “It’s fine, Chanyeol.”

Chanyeol’s hands reach out, and the next thing he knows, he’s pulled Kyungsoo in his arms, and he’s smelling the mint shampoo Kyungsoo’s been using for years.

“I did forget, _I did,_ I’m so sorry—“

Kyungsoo’s hand begins rubbing the small of his back in circles, the way he’s always done to calm him.

“It’s okay.” The words are starting to grate on his ears. “You’ve been busy.” 

Chanyeol clings to him, feeling like the worst person in the world. “It’s not okay. I’m so sorry, Soo.”

Kyungsoo pulls himself out of the hug, movements drained.

“You’re supposed to be mad at me,” Chanyeol says. “You should be shouting at me right now.”

“I’m not a kid, Yeol.” Kyungsoo’s voice is fragile. “It was two weeks ago, and they said they’d ‘get back to me’, which is the biggest flag to say I didn’t get in. It’s not that important anymore.”

Chanyeol wills himself to ignore the tightness in his chest. “But _you are._ ”

Kyungsoo doesn’t reply—and there's a new question hovering between them—leaving the thing inside him keening. 

Kyungsoo's never asked it before.

Never needed to. 

Chanyeol’s too afraid to bring it life. 

“Let me make it up to you Soo,” he says instead, grabbing the other boy’s hands in his own.

It’s strange, how Kyungsoo just lets him, albeit with a grimace on his face.

“You remember that fancy restaurant you said you wanted to try? We’ll go there, my treat,” he says fervently. “And then watch some movies together, like we used to do—“

Kyungsoo’s phone rings.

“Sorry,” Kyungsoo says, snatching his hands back. “I need to go. Baekhyun and Jongin want me to go to their picnic thing.” 

“Are you pissed, Soo? You have every right to be.”

For a moment, all that's between them is the revving of car engines and the hustle of people in their padded coats.

“I’m…” Kyungsoo’s breath puffs up in front of his face. “I’m tired, Chanyeol. That’s all it is. It’s useless to fight about it.”

Kyungsoo reaches out to squeeze his shoulder. “I’ll leave the planning to you, alright? It would be nice to hang out with you again,” his best friend says.

His best friend.

Chanyeol’s chest caves in.

“But Jongin’s waiting for me. Text me later.” 

He waves goodbye, and Chanyeol can’t stop him from leaving.

_jihye_17: oppa_

_jihye_17: can I have Friday for the both of us? I have a surprise._

_pcyeol: of course <3 I’ll pick you up. _

_jihye_17: you’re not curious?_

_pcyeol: u know kyungsoo’s my best friend right?_

_jihye_17: oh. he told you? im going to kill him <3 _

_pcyeol: don’t worry! he only told me about the dinner. i don’t even know where you’re taking me. you’re so sweet jihye, thank you_

_jihye_17: save the compliments for tomorrow_

_pcyeol: why save them for tomorrow when i can make you blush today?_

Chanyeol is fifteen.

Everything is suffocating—the girl group song blasting on the speakers, the smoke from the grill choking out his lungs.

But surrounded by those he thought were his friends, it’s the words that are being thrown at his face that squeeze at him the most.

“Soo.”

He pretends to scowl at his phone screen, empty of notifications. 

“Noona just texted me. Something’s happened. We need to go. Now.”

He doesn’t wait for Kyungsoo’s answer; only takes his bags, mumbles out a half-hearted apology, and drags Kyungsoo out of the restaurant.

He ignores the protests of his teammates, ignores Kyungsoo’s voice, ignores the tears threatening to blur his vision.

Each step is one farther away from their accusations—the all-encompassing dark of the night not enough to comfort him. 

He doesn’t know how they get there, but they reach a corner, ivy hanging along the walls, light from the streetlamp above them bathing everything in orange.

It’s after a few breaths that he realizes Kyungsoo is silent—there's patience shining in the set of his shoulders, understanding on the lines of his jaw.

_Are you alright?_

Chanyeol shakes his head, nausea leaving a bitter taste in his throat, and he feels fingertips trace his back before a hand starts rubbing comfortingly against it.

Kyungsoo always did catch and translate everything Chanyeol didn’t say better than anybody else.

After who knows how long, the fingertips are back, tapping against Chanyeol's arm.

There's concern in Kyungsoo's eyes, full of questions. 

“I’m bi.”

There have been no classes that told him of homophobia in Korea—there are only his teammates’ words from earlier, laughing over some slur. 

There are only the strangers that curled their lips at the two boys holding hands at some tucked-away corner, out on what looked to be a date.

There have only ever been his sister’s warnings as he and Kyungsoo spent more time together; his classmate’s sidelong glances at some gay character when they watched foreign movies.

“Oh.” Kyungsoo’s lips part. Kyungsoo doesn’t say anything more—his mouth is set in a line, gaze fiery.

“Yeah,” Chanyeol rushes, a bead of doubt lodging itself in his chest. “I—I don’t want anything to change between us, I just—I thought you’d want to know and—wait, are you mad?”

Kyungsoo closes the distance between them, each heavy step making the taller boy shrink back, fear slithering along his chest. 

Before he can process it, there are arms around his middle, replacing everything else.

Kyungsoo is hugging him, so very tight, almost shaking, and Chanyeol clings onto his solidity, a sob racking his throat. 

“I’m sorry.” Kyungsoo’s voice is hard with anger. “ _Shit_ , I’m sorry you had to hear what those sick fucks said. Are you okay, Yeol? God, I should’ve slammed them to the ground—“

“No,” Chanyeol laughs, weak and flustered, “I—for a second—I thought you were going to hate me.”

“Oh, Yeol.” 

Kyungsoo doesn’t let go. There’s an edge to his voice, anchoring Chanyeol to the present, giving him something to hold on to.

“I could never hate you.” 

The restaurant is perfect. 

There are string lights everywhere—light piano music trails from the band playing in the corner, and a waiter guides them to an already set table.

Earlier, Jihye had taken him to a pop-up museum, laughing along as she took photos for Chanyeol’s instagram.

They'd taken a walk in the park, and then gone to a bowling alley.

“It’s beautiful,” Chanyeol smiles. “I love it. Thank you.”

Jihye rests an elbow on the table. Her eyes are fond. “I should let Kyungsoo-oppa plan our dinners more then. It’s the first time today I’ve seen you like this.”

In the back of Chanyeol’s mind, it makes sense that Kyungsoo’s planned it.

Just as he thinks of it, the _thing_ inside him strikes on the opportunity—

_—of course he did, he knows you more than you know yourself—_

—and Chanyeol shoves it down, like he always has. 

Through wine and pasta and tarts, Chanyeol laughs with his girlfriend, pretending not to notice how her jokes fall flat, how her stories refuse to float through the air like they once did.

They end up on her couch, all soft pajamas and cotton shirts. 

Jihye’s legs are intertwined around his, hair fanning softly across his chest. She’s playing some new game on her phone, distracted.

He sends a Line to Kyungsoo.

_pcyeol: how was ur date?_

It’s a while before two checks pop up beside his message. Chanyeol bites his lip, watching the text bubble appear and disappear.

_dksoo: it wasn’t a date_

_pcyeol: okay then_

_pcyeol: how was the excursion with someone that liked you back?_

_dksoo: it’s not like that!!!_

Chanyeol huffs at his best friend’s antics, smile melting when he sees the next things Kyungsoo sends.

_dksoo: he says you’re cute tho_

It’s a selfie of Junmyeon, with stickers of a bunny going _hi! let’s be friends!_

“You look like someone stepped over your puppy,” Jihye teases. “What’s up?”

“Kyungsoo’s still with that Junmyeon guy.”

His frown filters into his voice, bringing it into a whine. “It’s eight at night.”

“You better be protective of me like that.”

Chanyeol brings his lips down onto her forehead, tapping his chest so she can snuggle in. “Babe, I glare at anyone that flirts with you.”

Jihye nods. “As you should.”

_pcyeol: if u hurt kyungsoo im going to come to ur house and do all sorts of things_

_dksoo: first of all i live in a mansion**_

_dksoo: also those are big words for someone that cant evenkdjcdjkz_

_dksoo: he took my phone_

_dksoo: it went great junmyeon hyung is very nice and friendly_

_pcyeol: tell me about it tomorrow_

_pcyeol: we’ll go that restaurant downtown_

_pcyeol: my treat [idc if u’re busy cancel ur plans]_

It’s an hour later when his phone buzzes again. He can almost hear Kyungsoo’s voice.

_dksoo: u should’ve told me earlier_

_dksoo: deal with baekhyun then i promised to go to the farmer’s market with them_

_pcyeol: baek loves me anyway_

Kyungsoo sends a sticker of a penguin rolling its eyes, and then one of a heart.

Chanyeol feels a wave of fondness overwhelm him—he rarely ever sent stickers to anyone.

He decides to call Baekhyun right then.

“Cancel your plans.” He sneaks a look at Jihye, lowering his voice just in case she wakes up. “I’m taking Kyungsoo out. Missed his application exam.”

A derisive snort comes from across the line. “He didn’t tell you, did he? Ah, my Kyungja.”

The knowledge of Kyungsoo keeping secrets from him is an unwelcome weight in his chest.

“What didn’t he tell me?” Chanyeol frowns.

“Probably didn’t get mad at you either, it’s alright, I’ll do it for him.”

There’s a crackle from the phone, the sound of Baekhyun switching hands. 

“You’re a real asshole, Park Chanyeol. Fuck you.”

The outright hostility isn’t new to Chanyeol—Baekhyun is as sharp as he is soft, as cutting as he is loud.

It is, however, additional baggage to his confusion, and he extricates himself from Jihye’s side to go to the kitchen.

“At least tell me why you’re cursing me out.” He rests his forearms on the counter, cold seeping into his hands.

“The day of the exam,” Baekhyun sighs, an annoyed sound.

“He waited for your dumb ass. _For so long._ He wouldn’t let anyone in the special sections, the ones nearest to the judges.”

It happens slowly.

“Not until he finished cooking his dish. You know how distracted he was during the whole thing? Kept looking at the entrance like you’d magically appear even if it was obvious you’d forgotten.”

There’s a ringing in Chanyeol’s ears, a wrongness in his gut, building and building, overtaking his senses, one by one.

Baekhyun’s texts come back to him.

_Where have you been?_

“I—“

“And then,” Baekhyun cuts him off, “when he accepted that his _best friend_ wasn’t showing up, he had me and Jongin finally come up front. He might as well have been a wet puppy with how much he was shaking.”

“Shit.”

“’ _Shit’_ is right, Chanyeol.” 

There’s a pause, Baekhyun’s snarl somehow seeping into his syllables. “And he still didn’t tell you, yeah? Didn’t want you to feel guilty over pussy, oh my god.”

Baekhyun’s laugh has never sounded so insulting.

“Couldn’t be me. I almost didn’t tell him where you were, you know? Almost texted you so we could come up with some lie.”

The world unfreezes, guilt strong enough to spur him into action. 

He grabs his padded coat from the rack, doesn’t even bother to check on Jihye before stepping out into the night.

“But he saw the text asking me if I had any condoms,” the wind whips at Chanyeol’s hair, “and that’s when he realized his best friend traded him for some girl he met in class.“

Chanyeol had said once, how dangerous people like Baekhyun could be.

Baekhyun could manipulate everything about himself—his biggest asset, as he once admitted.

He was so good at it it seeped into his words, until he could turn anything and everything into a weapon, if he tried hard enough.

The words hit home.

Too close, in fact, which was probably what Baekhyun wanted to do anyway. 

“Go. Take him out. Beg, I don't care."

There's a huff, as cutting as everything else he's said.

"I don’t usually go this hard, Chanyeol. You know that. But I’ve never seen Kyungsoo look so…I don’t know. Small, maybe. Devastated. I never want to see him look like that again.”

Sometimes Chanyeol forgot—that the only difference between him and Kyungsoo's other close friends is the one year his mother had given to the both of them, before they entered high school. 

He forces himself to be thankful, if only to distract himself from the guilt, that there are other people looking out for Kyungsoo just as much as he is. 

It doesn't work. 

Chanyeol flags down a taxi, barely caring about how late it’s become. 

Long after the click of their call has gone out is when Chanyeol texts Kyungsoo again.

_pcyeol: u awake?_

_dksoo: what is it?_

_pcyeol: let me sleepover_

_pcyeol: u still haven’t gotten rid of my overnight bag right?_

_dksoo: come over next time_

_dksoo: junmyeon’s staying over in jongdae’s room_

_dksoo: no im not cmon over chanyeol im about to leave_

Chanyeol doesn’t heed the irrational bubble of jealousy coming up his throat.

By the time he arrives at Kyungsoo’s apartment, Junmyeon is long gone.

Kyungsoo’s hair is messy when he opens the door, shirt rumpled, lips looking like they were bitten, and Chanyeol ignores the implications of each thing he notices.

“Yeol,” he says, making way for him to come inside, "what is it?" 

In the dim light of their lamps, Jongdae raising an eyebrow as he passes them on the couch, Chanyeol begs, apologizing until Kyungsoo gets tired of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this fic was made to multiple one-hour loop videos of baekhyun's ost "my love". do with that what u will


	2. spring

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> please take note that the [present] story is set when the characters are at least 20!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> definition of terms:
> 
> judoka: someone that practices judo. in this fic, ksoo is a judoka, like the role he played in his movie, Hyung (2016)
> 
> ippon: the highest score than can be obtained in judo [competitions]
> 
> ippon seoi nage: a throw in judo; consisting of placing your back against your opponent and throwing them to the floor over your shoulder 
> 
> [chapterly reminder that spaces—there will be long ones—are consistent and intentional]

Chanyeol is sixteen.

He drops the bag of soil to the floor with a thud, stretching out his back.

“Training,” Kyungsoo passes by in his overalls, chuckling at Chanyeol’s groans.

“Just because you judokas carry people doesn’t mean everybody else can.”

“Sounds like the judoka isn’t the one making noise because of it,” Kyungsoo teases. 

It’s their second week of working on Kyungsoo’s father’s new garden, and his best friend has formed a new attachment to herbs and succulents.

Chanyeol promised to help—and so here he is, breaking his back carrying gardening tools instead of shooting hoops.

He doesn't mind it one bit, but he decides it's fun to annoy Kyungsoo by whining. 

“Why would you even do this,” Chanyeol asks, slumping on some loose soil. “You’re going to leave them behind when you go to college anyway.”

Kyungsoo hands him some basil leaves, freshly plucked, encased neatly in a pouch made of rough-looking fabric.

He’s used to Chanyeol’s tendencies by now, and has grown around them.

“We move out for college in three years, Yeol.”

 _We_ —and Chanyeol is consumed by sentiment—he keeps the validation close; proof that he and Kyungsoo already thought of themselves as inseparable.

“It’s an awfully long time to consider just not taking up the hobby at all. It’s relaxing.”

“Relaxing,” Chanyeol snorts. “Right. Coming from someone that throws people to the ground for recreation.”

“With their consent.”

“Does it matter?”

“You'd be surprised.” 

Chanyeol has learned to recognize Kyungsoo’s tells—and he knows Kyungsoo is barely listening. 

“Besides, dad won’t have the time to learn all the basics. He’s better off with me just teaching him when I leave. Or before that.”

It’s a while before Chanyeol pipes up again, content to watch Kyungsoo put one plant or the other into bright clay pots. 

“What’s gotten into you anyway? You didn’t like this stuff before.”

“Why does anyone like anything?” Kyungsoo shrugs. “I'm feeling sappy. Maybe it’s because I’m just trying to get as much as I can even if I know I’m going to have to let go anyway.”

“As much as you can of what?”

“Plants promise you that everything can work out if you care enough.”

For a beat and more, there’s only the harsh sun beating down on Chanyeol’s face, the rhythmic pounding of soil going beside birdsong.

“You’re right,” Chanyeol nods, “you’re sappy as all hell today.”

Kyungsoo glares, but doesn’t comment any further, just goes back to repotting his herbs.

It’s when they’re eating the takoyaki that Chanyeol remembers.

Kyungsoo didn’t answer his question. 

Chanyeol takes Kyungsoo out to the new restaurant as promised—chefs cooking in front of guests on one side, waiters balancing ramen on their trays weaving in and out of tables.

In truth, Chanyeol didn’t have to apologize for long—which makes him feel even worse, taints the sushi until it tastes bitter on his tongue.

“I could go for some beer,” Kyungsoo mutters right after, and somehow, they end up driving at the homestay, drinking in front of the beach.

The wind is so much harsher, the cold cutting through his bones.

“I really am sorry,” Chanyeol brings his glass to clink against Kyungsoo’s. “Thank you for not hating me, even when I’m the biggest asshole in the world.”

“I could never really hate you.” Kyungsoo licks the beer foam off his lips. There’s no emotion behind it. “Nobody else would put up with your jokes if I hated you.” 

“My jokes are top-notch, fuck you.”

Before he can do a comeback, Kyungsoo’s phone buzzes loudly on the table, almost falling off before Kyungsoo swipes at it. 

His fingerless gloves are made of wool, a gift Baekyun had gotten him for Christmas. 

“Hyung,” Kyungsoo smiles, bringing the phone up to his ear. “Yeah. Sure, I’d love to. Same place? Alright, I’ll see you then.”

“Who was that?” 

“Junmyeon-hyung,” Kyungsoo replies. “He’s checking up on me. Says he wants to record again.”

It’s almost funny—how any mention of Junmyeon has him feeling competitive. “I should call Jihye for the project we’re working on.” 

“You should.” Kyungsoo’s smile is barely comprehensible—just a small tilt of the lips, wan and fading, almost obligatory.

That’s all he says, and Chanyeol can’t help but feel guilty again at mentioning Jihye, so pushes his phone back inside his pocket.

“Do you really like Jihye?” he ventures. “Are you mad at her?”

Kyungsoo snorts, smile growing into something more self-deprecating.

“Why would I be mad, Yeol? She makes you happy.”

"Are you sure? I just—I don’t want you feeling like I’ve left you behind, that’s all.”

He keeps his eyes on the waves, a constant cycle of destruction and regeneration—he can’t bring himself to look at Kyungsoo.

Kyungsoo does the same.

“I want you to be happy.” Kyungsoo’s next words are so, so, quiet. “Don’t you want the same for me?”

“Of course,” Chanyeol mutters, automatic. 

Of course he does. 

Kyungsoo deserved the world and more. 

“Then what’s the problem?”

The words die softly in Chanyeol’s throat.

Kyungsoo stands up, reaches a hand towards him.

These days, worry’s been taking a place in the center of Chanyeol’s emotions. 

He’s been getting all sorts of looks he can’t translate—ones that aren’t in the language they’ve formed, new expressions that only Kyungsoo knows the meanings to.

Chanyeol doesn’t know what the gleam in his eyes mean—hates himself for it.

Kyungsoo smiles, and it tears apart some piece of Chanyeol—

—because it's strange. Unfamiliar.

“About time to get back, yeah? I’m freezing.”

Jihye’s beauty grows with time—but Chanyeol notices that it’s all that grows as the seasons change.

He feels it—the dulling of the sparkle in his smile, the frustration as he tries to write songs and comes up empty when he tries to think of her.

The magic Jihye’s movements once had is now routine—her hair now catches too much on his face rather than falling gracefully over her shoulders.

Her eyes are now demanding, rather than being filled with the fire that drew Chanyeol in the first place.

Their kisses are less heated, less world-stopping—wet and rushed, backstage during her plays, on the bleachers during his games.

When he rants about it to Kyungsoo, the other boy takes out his headphones, giving him his full attention.

He doesn’t offer much advice, only bites his lip and smiles as he murmurs, “maybe you’re just transitioning out of the honeymoon phase. I’m sure you guys will get through it.”

After they wake up, having dozed off on the couch watching basketball plays and judo techniques, Chanyeol suggests the takoyaki place they always go to for lunch.

But Kyungsoo stops him.

“Sorry,” he says, “I forgot to tell you. Me and Junmyeon are planning to record again today.”

Chanyeol raises his eyebrows, trying to ignore the familiar pang coursing through him. 

“How many projects does he have?”

Kyungsoo shakes his head. “None. It’s just—fun? I guess? We don’t do much of it, just goof around the studio after, but I like his songs. And company.”

There’s the stab of betrayal creeping up his throat again, filling his mind with ideas of being replaced—

_—we used to do that—_

—but he keeps the words to himself.

 _“_ I’ll text you if we finish early.” 

He and Jihye date for four more months, during which Kyungsoo grows increasingly distant.

Chanyeol still sees him; still waits for him after training if he doesn’t have a date or schoolwork to get to, or schedules lunches (sometimes breakfast) by the empty bleachers in the outdoor tennis court.

But just as often, if not more, he’ll see Baekhyun with his arm around Kyungsoo’s, Junmyeon studying with him in the hallways. 

His best friend always seems to be laughing at something or the other, having Jongin bend down to whisper something in his ear, sharing looks that Chanyeol doesn’t know the backstory to.

Jihye is always trying to pull him to the side, dates and hangouts with her friends, so Chanyeol can’t go and find out the inside joke—he has to accept that Kyungsoo may now have a separate language he can’t understand.

Chanyeol feels like he’s watching Kyungsoo slip away from him, and it’s all because Chanyeol pushed him first.

Chanyeol is seventeen.

They’re on their last legs of high school—a year and a half away from college.

Winter has only just begun, painting a cloud of smoke in front of Kyungsoo’s face everytime he speaks.

His phone buzzes, and the text reads to stall Kyungsoo, because the food isn’t ready yet.

_We’re waiting on the chicken, distract him please._

Chanyeol strays from their usual route to pull Kyungsoo into a gift shop. 

It had been his plan to get his gifts delivered, but this would have to do.

The cashier recognizes him—there are only a few as tall as Chanyeol (ever since his growth spurt) to go through their doors. 

She hands him a paper bag, red Japanese paper poking out the sides.

“Happy Birthday.”

Kyungsoo’s eyes are wide. “You—what,” he blinks. “You know I don’t do gifts.”

“You gave me a gift for me last year,” Chanyeol shrugs, feigning nonchalance.

Kyungsoo’s brows furrow together, a battle in his face, and Chanyeol has a good time of watching it play out before Kyungsoo eventually gives up and reaches in.

His hands pull out a soft penguin plushie—the exact partner to the giraffe one he’d gotten Chanyeol last year.

“So we match,” Chanyeol grins, manhandling him out of the store before he can ask further questions.

Chanyeol does his best—they bicker, back and forth, distracting Kyungsoo of the cars parked around the neighborhood, the cleaners and bake shops and delivery men.

By the time they reach the Do family gate, Chanyeol forgets what they’re fighting about as anxiety wells up inside him.

Planning it months before, Chanyeol hadn’t been sure of how Kyungsoo would react.

It took effort to find his past contacts and filter them, especially since Kyungsoo didn’t talk much about them, if at all.

There was a high likelihood of Kyungsoo hating it—

—and of trying to hide that he hated it—

—and an even higher likelihood of Chanyeol catching him.

But Kyungsoo’s breath hitches from beside him, and Chanyeol convinces himself it’s a success.

Shining in Kyungsoo’s face is awe.

And wonder.

And surprise.

The garden has been transformed into an events place—the plants have been lovingly moved and arranged to a far side where they had the least exposure to people, and lantern lights floated above the tables.

In the middle is a wooden table full of food; Kyungsoo’s favorite cake and chicken and seaweed soup, surrounded by people hand-picked by Chanyeol, the ones who Kyungsoo is more comfortable around.

But what has Chanyeol’s nerves in a bundle are the two friends from his old hometown that have come bearing gifts.

The moment they see each other, they move forward, legs carrying them across the yard.

The others watch, warmth in their gazes, as they hug, longer than necessary.

“We miss you,” they say, and Chanyeol is carried away by Kyungsoo’s father, telling them to eat and celebrate.

It’s much later, when the dust has settled, and all that’s left are Kyungsoo and Chanyeol in their pajamas. 

They’re at the rooftop, watching the city lights twinkle along the streets. Kyungsoo’s father has set up snacks and soju beside them.

“So,” Kyungsoo starts, hands around a cup of hot chocolate, “it was you.” 

Chanyeol smiles, but he doesn’t move from his spot, nor does he turn.

He just looks on, down to the people trying to go home, or the couples that are trying to find a good place to get drunk. Their breaths are splashes to the portrait, puffing up among the traffic signs and crosswalks. 

“I didn’t know if it would work,” he admits, bringing the cup to his lips.

He finally faces Kyungsoo, and Chanyeol doesn’t know how his best friend manages to be so _beautiful_ —hair messy, his eyes glistening under the light of the stars; steam painting them in a different setting, like they’re prettier just because Chanyeol has to stumble through a fog to see them. 

“I didn’t know if you’d be happy to see them, or if you’d hate me for bringing back bad memories, I didn’t know if they’d respond either. They had class, and Ilsan is too far for its own good—“

Kyungsoo’s captured him in a hug, and Chanyeol is suspended, the other boy’s sudden weight and heat waking something in him he didn’t know existed until now.

He swallows, throat dry. 

He brings his arms around Kyungsoo’s shoulders, letting his mint shampoo invade his senses.

“Thank you,” Kyungsoo whispers. “You don’t know how much you mean to me.”

Chanyeol’s laugh is nervous. “I have a feeling I do.”

Later, when Kyungsoo is snoring softly behind him, and only the stars can bear witness to the fluttering in his heart, Chanyeol digs in.

Down, down, down, he goes, past the platonic pressure of fingers asking for comfort during scary movies and their mock wrestling matches.

He finds, the barest of lines an image, but definitely whole— _Kyungsoo_. 

There—

His voice as he chastises him for planning trouble and the way his fingers flutter to his chest whenever he sings a high note during competitions. 

He _feels_ Kyungsoo, hands above the small of his back, holding on to him as they run from the higher years that they’ve pranked. 

Kyungsoo has always gone with Chanyeol—even if he dragged them both into more trouble than it was worth.

“Because you shouldn’t be alone,” he’d simply say, when Chanyeol asks why.

There’s Kyungsoo’s hoodies and his loose shirts and his gold-wire glasses that make him look so much more endearing; his whines as Jongin sides with Chanyeol on which Marvel movie is the best. 

Chanyeol sees it—love.

Fragile.

Weak.

Stubborn. 

Chanyeol is seventeen years old, and he is terrified of what he finds.

It’s during the season of letting go—fall, leaves turning bright red and orange and yellow, that Jihye breaks up with him.

Chanyeol can’t bring himself to act surprised, only disappointed and guilty.

It’s been obvious for the both of them—how their affections have gone to a standstill, how they’ve stopped replying sweet messages and found nothing to gain traction on their ever since.

Chanyeol dislikes Jihye’s group of friends, and Jihye doesn’t go with his.

They’ve stopped holding hands, and having lunch with her has started to feel like a chore, almost as much as the dates they’d get into.

“I hope you figure that out, oppa,” Jihye says, hair billowing in the autumn breeze, smile rueful under her scarf. “I don’t appreciate being a test run. I imagine no one would.”

“Test run?” Chanyeol repeats.

A stray tendril of hair has escaped her updo, flittering across her face, and Chanyeol’s hand is halfway across the space between them when Jihye fixes it herself.

“I would never treat you like some experiment. I—wouldn't—I _didn’t._ You’re amazing, Jihye.”

The smile doesn’t leave her lips, not showing any other signs of emotions other than regret and pleasantness.

“I am,” she agrees, “but you know what they say. To a child it's crayons over diamonds, something like that.”

“Are you saying I’m a child?”

There’s a beat before Jihye speaks, and Chanyeol sees a sad glint come to her eyes. “I’m saying I’m not what you want, Chanyeol.”

 _I know that_ , a voice inside him says, barely getting through the shadows, making him feel worse by the second. 

_I’ve always known what I wanted, but I tried to convince myself that I wanted you._

“It’s not a good feeling. Knowing you’re not enough for a person. Lucky for you, I’ve dealt with enough to recognize when that starts to happen.”

Chanyeol’s next words are soft.

He can’t bring himself to deny the things she says.

So he asks instead, “And when did it start to happen for me and you?”

She pulls in a silent breath, voice shaking, and it’s then that her façade cracks. “Long enough for me to think that maybe we should have never been a thing in the first place.”

The leaves fall slowly around them, forming a carpet of colors under their feet. 

“I’m sorry.” Chanyeol’s tongue is heavy with guilt. He can't say anything else. 

Despite their recent coldness, he doesn’t want Jihye thinking that all they’ve been through was for nothing. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“Almost nobody ever does.” Jihye’s mouth becomes a tight, trembling line. “Not when it comes to this.”

“What can I do?” Chanyeol pleads.

He doesn’t mean it, and Jihye understands.

“How about a last kiss, heartbreaker?”

Chanyeol leans in so Jihye doesn’t have to, angling their faces at what Chanyeol once thought was the perfect position for their lips to meet perfectly.

The kiss is hot and wet, Jihye pulling away first.

“You’re perfect,” Chanyeol whispers. “I’m so sorry.”

Jihye’s laugh is broken. Chanyeol opens his arms, and she steps into them, her lotion’s mix of floral and pine so familiar he can imagine it on his cushions.

“You’re so sweet, oppa,” Jihye murmurs, “especially when you try not to be.”

She breaks out of their embrace, and Chanyeol watches her go.

Chanyeol is eighteen years old.

Noise erupts from the bleachers as Kyungsoo pulls through with his final move, and his opponent has no other choice but to land with a solid slap to the mats.

Kyungsoo wins. 

The giant screen above them flashes a replay of Kyungsoo’s _seoinage_ (Chanyeol only knows what it’s called because Kyungsoo had tried to practice it on him), and he can’t stop the smile on his lips—the move is perfect, as it should be, pride bubbling up his chest.

_WINNER BY IPPON_

_DO KYUNGSOO - SEOUL NATIONAL ARTS UNIVERSITY_

The moment Kyungsoo steps back into the bleachers, he’s tossed around like a rag doll. 

His teammates heartily slap him everywhere they can, jostling him from side to side, and Chanyeol watches from afar.

It’s been a year since that night up on the rooftop, when he’d discovered the thing inside of him, wrapping its claws around his heart.

Kyungsoo’s frustrated laugh tells Chanyeol that they’re tickling him, and it’s painful and elating, all at the same time—because Kyungsoo’s smile could bring anyone down on their knees.

“Go,” a voice says beside him. 

It’s Dahyun, captain of the women’s judo team.

“He’s going to melt if you keep looking at him like that.”

Chanyeol feels a spike of panic. “You think you can introduce me? Kyungsoo doesn’t want to give out numbers.” 

But her laughter is already twinkling, saying it’s useless.

“Clear the way,” she says to another teammate, and winks. “You’ve been waiting on him for years now. You might as well be part of the team.”

She meant waiting for Kyungsoo after practice. 

Hopefully.

With a last look at her, Chanyeol plunges into the fray, their congratulations mixing together in a flurry of _future team captain_ s and _you were amazing_ s and _get him get him_ s—

“Soo,” he calls, and he feels Kyungsoo’s breath comes out in an _oomph_.

Chanyeol’s arms wrap themselves around his shoulders.

Kyungsoo’s eyes are wide, no doubt trying to figure out how he’d manage to get through the wall that is the judo varsity team. 

“I knew you could do it,” Chanyeol mutters against him, the smell of his mint shampoo mingling with sweat and cotton. “Congratulations, I’m glad you beating me up didn’t go to waste.”

“Yeol,” Kyungsoo complains, too worn out, and for a second, only a second, Chanyeol thinks Kyungsoo might feel enough of what Chanyeol did, too soft to shove him away, “get off me.”

Chanyeol’s about to let go when Dahyun shouts, _get them_ , and the team turns on both boys with a renewed frenzy.

Chanyeol tightens his hold, shifting so he bears the brunt of it. 

Kyungsoo looks up, slightly worried, but Chanyeol’s chuckling, playing along as his teammates tickle and shove their way to Kyungsoo.

“Why are they trying to mob you,” Chanyeol laughs, burying his face in the crook of his best friend’s neck.

“I made a bet,” Kyungsoo says, “if I ever won first place they could beat me up all they wanted.”

“You’re a masochist.” 

“I’m _your_ masochist,” Kyungsoo's smile turns his lips into a heart.

There’s something crawling along Chanyeol’s chest—sharp and glinting, cutting through the fog of Kyungsoo, holding him close, holding him back.

 _That smile will never be yours,_ it says _._

The voice is his own. 

It breaks something in him so _cleanly_ that he’s sure he won’t be able to hide the hurt in his eyes, so he chooses to close everything off instead.

No emotion is better than bad emotion, especially right now, when Kyungsoo is high and happy at the victory he’d worked on for months.

But Kyungsoo is Kyungsoo, and he sees it—sees the exact moment Chanyeol chooses to disconnect.

And because Chanyeol is Chanyeol, he sees it too—the question in Kyungsoo’s eyes, the concern about to be uttered on his lips.

So he smiles, so big and bright it feels almost forced, and he isn’t sure it works.

“Don’t worry,” he says, linking his hands together, groaning at Kyungsoo’s teammates that take it as a challenge. “I’ll protect you.”

“Where are you,” Chanyeol mutters from the couch.

He’s finally grown sick of his room, not having moved for hours since he woke up with a mix of sadness and guilt weighing down his bones.

Baekhyun is out again, either in the city or back to their family house.

“Me and Jihye broke up.”

There’s a beat of silence—almost silence—because somebody shouts Kyungsoo’s name in the background. 

“What?” The line crackles. “You and Jihye what?”

“Yesterday. We broke up.”

"Wait for me." 

Kyungsoo knocks on the door thirty minutes later, sweater looking impossibly big on him.

Chanyeol regards him with what he guesses is an impassive look, not having the energy for anything else.

He watches Kyungsoo soften, listens to the cadence of comfort in his voice as he sidles up next to Chanyeol.

He feels Kyungsoo’s arm around his waist, so he leans back to rest his head on Kyungsoo’s shoulder.

There are fingers rubbing circles into his side, the familiar gesture the final crack in the dam of indifference inside him.

“I’m here.” Kyungsoo holds him as he sobs, bringing his other arm around him too, pressing him closer. “I’m here.”

His perfume—Chanyeol remembers him always loving herbs—clashes with Jihye’s lotion, scent lingering, haunting, around him.

“Do you want to talk,” Kyungsoo mutters, “or stay like this?”

“Maybe both,” he mumbles back, nuzzling into Kyungsoo’s oversized sweater. Plain black with a weave along its collar, it’s the one they bought at a field trip only a year ago.

“Okay,” Kyungsoo pats his hair. “Okay. Go on, Yeol. I’m here.”

The night is filled with broken phrases—he tells Kyungsoo of how everything was his fault, of having something wrong with him, of not knowing better.

“Nothing’s wrong with you,” Kyungsoo assures. “It happens. It’s normal to fall out of love.”

“We weren’t in love in the first place.” 

Chanyeol’s syllables droop together, tiredness finally taking hold. They’ve changed positions, so that Chanyeol’s head rests on Kyungsoo’s lap.

Kyungsoo’s fingers card through his hair, constant and comforting. 

“Sleep, Yeol. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

“I miss you,” Chanyeol slurs. All at once, everything tumbles out. “I don’t have new friends like you do. Have you been avoiding me?”

He can’t help the hurt seeping into his voice. He’s too tired to prevent it. 

“Am I still your best friend?” 

There’s silence—until thunder rumbles in the distance, bringing a torrent down with it. 

Each second where Kyungsoo doesn’t answer has Chanyeol’s heart crumpling, the chance of Kyungsoo admitting that they were done getting bigger and bigger.

“Soo.”

There are new tears in his eyes, a new crack in the thing buried inside him, spiderwebbing bit by bit until Chanyeol feels like he could shatter. 

“Answer me.” 

“Yeol,” Kyungsoo says, "get up." 

There is no assurance spilling from his lips, and Chanyeol's gut drops even further.

“Answer me,” Chanyeol repeats. He sounds pathetic, even to him. 

“Let’s get you to bed, okay? You’re tired.”

Kyungsoo’s tone barely gets him moving.

Chanyeol complies with a weight to his movements; there’s dread coating his skin, forcing its way down his throat, choking off his air.

He could lose Jihye.

It would be something he’d survive.

But Kyungsoo?

The tears flow freely now, even when they settle inside the covers, even when Kyungsoo takes a cloth and wipes it across his cheeks.

“When we met,” Kyungsoo says into the space between them, “I didn’t like you.”

Kyungsoo’s arm is under Chanyeol’s pillow—the other is around Chanyeol’s waist, pressing him close.

Chanyeol lets the thing inside him loose—thinking it would be too weak now, after so many years of suppression.

Chanyeol is wrong.

The thing strikes every piece of his senses, making him hyper-aware of Kyungsoo’s heat against him, the soft rhythm of Kyungsoo’s hands against his shoulder the only music it needed.

“Your eyes were weird.” Kyungsoo’s voice cuts through the haze. “And you were too loud when you wanted to be, too shy when you didn’t. I never thought I’d like being friends with you, because we were so different.”

Kyungsoo’s chuckle rumbles through Chanyeol’s back. “But we’re here now. Eight years later, and we’ve gotten through everything the world’s thrown at us so far.”

Chanyeol's eyes are questioning.

“And you have the audacity to ask me if you’re still my best friend?”

Kyungsoo’s fingers card through his hair again, their constant pull, combined with the silent reassurance of Kyungsoo's closeness, pushing him further down to sleep. 

“We’re best friends, Yeol. Nothing will change that. I promise.”

Kyungsoo keeps close during Chanyeol’s post-breakup period. 

They go to the movies, to classes, even to training, together.

Chanyeol’s surprised when he's invited to go to the farmer’s market, which Kyungsoo’s essentially banned him from since the summer of 2018, when Chanyeol knocked down a bonsai arrangement.

It’s like Kyungsoo is trying to make up for the days of being absent by his side, because he’s there—

—he’s there when he passes by Jihye in the hallways, a polite smile on her face, sending something tightening in Chanyeol’s chest.

Kyungsoo is there when Chanyeol sees her, joint at the hip, with another guy, teasing and flirting and laughing just like they did back when they were official.

Kyungsoo is there, pulling him away, changing their routes, suggesting different things to focus on, making sure Chanyeol is busy. 

Weeks pass by, and Chanyeol is starting to feel like his old-self again.

There is less guilt following his footsteps, less apprehension when he sees Jihye along the staircases.

Kyungsoo is back by his side, almost going back to normal, bit by bit, easing up on the attention he gives him.

But the moment Kyungsoo leaves some space between their schedules, Chanyeol will pout, the clinginess returning with a vengeance, and Kyungsoo will roll his eyes but adjust accordingly.

 _Not yet_ , Chanyeol wants to say, now selfish of the routine he took for granted.

_Don’t leave me yet._

Chanyeol is nineteen years old. 

They’re watching the sun rise, running on iced coffee and leftover donuts.

The wind whips at Chanyeol’s ankles, bitingly cold above the top of the rock he and Kyungsoo had settled on only half an hour before.

“Wake up,” he’d said, back at the room they were staying at, shaking the smaller boy’s shoulder. “Soo. Psst. Wake up.”

“Yeol,” Kyungsoo mutters, not even bothering to pretend to sound sleepy. “What do you want?”

Kyungsoo had been fidgeting with the blanket since they’d decided to go to sleep; tossing and turning while the others—Jongin and Baekhyun and Sehun—snored softly beside him.

“Watch the sunrise with me,” he’d said. In Chanyeol’s hands were mugs of coffee and ice cubes.

“How about the others?”

“They won’t wake up anytime soon,” he’d winked, narrowly avoiding the hearty slap to his arm, “come on.” 

The crash of waves under them fills the silence.

There’s been a lull in the conversation—the both of them have elected to watch the sky lighten, gentle morning rays piercing through the clouds.

Kyungsoo shivers, and before Chanyeol knows what he’s doing, he’s taking off his jacket, bringing it around Kyungsoo’s frame.

“You should’ve gotten a blanket.”

Kyungsoo’s lips turn up, barely a smile, huff mingling with the sharp sting of the wind.

Kyungsoo doesn’t reject Chanyeol’s affections like he usually does, and scoots closer so he can lean on Chanyeol’s shoulder. 

Warmth seeps through his chest—collecting in a pool in his gut. 

“When you said ‘watch the sunrise’,” Kyungsoo mumbles, “I didn’t know you meant in front of the ocean.”

“We’re at the beach,” Chanyeol defends, “where else would I have meant?”

Kyungsoo shrugs. “Someplace warmer. Farther from the shore. Somewhere waves don’t attack my poor feet every five seconds.”

“It’s only a little cold,” Chanyeol rolls his eyes. “You’re more dramatic than me.”

“No one’s more dramatic than you.”

Chanyeol only hums in response, watching the water crash and swirl and foam.

When the rays of the sun are just beginning to break through the rock formations, Kyungsoo brings out his phone to take a picture.

At Chanyeol’s snort, he turns defensive.

“It’s pretty.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t have to.”

Instead of the sunrise, Chanyeol watches Kyungsoo instead, the light hitting his face, bathing it in gold.

It’s been two years since that moment on the rooftop, since Chanyeol realized he held more for his best friend than Kyungsoo would ever hold for him—two years of silent fear and sometimes-hesitant touches and calculated emotions.

He’d tried to shove it deep, down to trenches of who he was, if only to preserve what they had.

The only thing scarier than being rejected by Kyungsoo is losing him—

—losing his companionship on those exhausted after-practice nights, losing the language they’d built, losing the safe space both of them had cultivated over the years—

—he’d have Kyungsoo whole or not at all.

Even by his best efforts, he’d fail sometimes—the idea of being loved more than platonically squeezing his heart in a bind, times when he’d allow himself to think Kyungsoo’s gaze meant something else.

Times like this—when Chanyeol questions what would happen if he’d confessed, right here and now.

“Wake up.”

There’s a slap to his thigh, and he jolts to Kyungsoo laughing as he takes a selfie.

As they bicker back and forth over camera angles, Chanyeol forces himself to be content with what they have.

It’s enough.

It’s enough.

It has to be.

It’s the last day of October, and autumn is making way for winter.

Kyungsoo’s phone buzzes against the coffee table.

Chanyeol is jostled from his position on Kyungsoo’s lap, whining low in his throat.

The movie in front of them is on mute, partly because Kyungsoo had decided halfway that the main protagonist was only getting away with the things she did because he was hot—

—which led to Chanyeol advocating that it wasn’t her fault that she could exploit toxic masculinity for her own goals.

Chanyeol pretends he doesn’t hear Kyungsoo’s conversation.

There it is again—jealousy—wrapping around his throat, making him clumsy and irrational.

“I have to go now.” Kyungsoo stands, leaving Chanyeol to pout against the sofa. “You want me to have Baekhyun bring back food?”

He looks dressed more for a date rather than a party—quietly stunning in his white turtleneck and black chinos. A cream-beige coat is the only layer he has against the cold. 

Kyungoo’s question is left unanswered.

“You still hang around with Junmyeon?”

Kyungsoo hums. “We hung around all summer.”

“Oh.” Chanyeol sits up. “I didn’t know that.”

“You were with Jihye,” Kyungsoo says, simple and clear.

For a moment, tension is all that stands between them; beginnings of a secret hanging in the air, and then the both of them speak—

“Do you like him?”

“We fucked.”

—at the same time.

“Oh.” Chanyeol’s lips part, surprise no doubt dancing across his face. “Oh.”

Chanyeol doesn’t know where it hurts—doesn’t bother trying. “Are you dating?” 

“No.” Kyungsoo shrugs on his coat, the fabric swishing under the promise of wind. He refuses to meet Chanyeol’s eyes.

“It was just a thing that happened. I don’t have a boyfriend.”

“Of course you don’t,” Chanyeol replies. His mouth is filled with sawdust; it’s a wonder he can joke at all. “He’d have to go through me first.”

He expects Kyungsoo to chuckle, maybe at least play along.

But all Kyungsoo does is look at him—and for a second, the look in his eyes is so _raw_ —Chanyeol shrinks back.

For a split second, Kyungsoo leaves it—leaves his eyes to tell Chanyeol everything—and then he blinks, pasting that pleasant expression back on.

“He will.” Kyungsoo pauses at the doorway. His smile is empty. “I’ll see you later.”

There’s a click, and Chanyeol sighs against the back of the couch, letting tides of whatever emotion wash over him.

It’s a moment before he stands back up and goes to his studio, composition notebook in hand.

Chanyeol is twenty years old.

Kyungsoo has long fallen asleep; sometime around clinging to Chanyeol as they emptied the beer cans now littering the space and laughing drunkenly about nothing and anything.

His best friend’s earlier confession lays heavy on his mind—Kyungsoo is gay.

Kyungsoo—perfect, caring, sharp Kyungsoo—is gay.

Kyungsoo, who is now in the throes of sleep, pulled even deeper by alcohol, no idea of Chanyeol resting his elbows on his knees, tears blurring his vision.

Kyungsoo, whose face is illuminated by a beam of moonlight, hands delicate around his pillow, eyelashes fanning across his cheeks, looking unreal as his breath comes up and down.

“Kyungsoo,” Chanyeol whispers, knowing he can’t hear, voice catching to end in a broken sob, addressing the _thing_ inside him, buried for years, but never stopped, never thwarted, never cut.

“I love you.”

Chanyeol is overwhelmed with the sheer size of it—overwhelmed at how deep it’s gotten.

“I love you,” he repeats. “I love you.”

_I love you, I love you, I love you—_

_—_ the words weaving along the night sky;

_I love you I love you I love you—_

_—_ their memories hitting him slowly, picking up speed as they play over and over;

_I love you I love you I love you—_

—these moments are all he allows himself—tears carving out a hole in his chest.

“Yeol?”

His eyes snap open, every inch of him freezing at the mention of his name. Panic runs through his veins—was he awake all this time—

“Yeol,” Kyungsoo slurs, fingers reaching for air, “Yeol, where are you?”

The way Kyungsoo says his years-old nickname, the sole stamp to a time long gone, worried and quiet, almost has Chanyeol pressing him close.

“Here,” he chokes, willing his blood to calm down. He makes his way over, sliding underneath the covers of their shared mattress on the floor. “I’m here.”

“Are you okay?” Kyungsoo’s eyes are half-open, barely clinging to consciousness. And then he reaches out to wipe the wetness from his cheeks.

“Have you been crying?”

“It’s nothing,” he says. “Go back to sleep.”

“No.” Kyungsoo’s frown is so endearing, brows furrowing together, bottom lip jutting out, it _hurts_. “What’s wrong?”

“Just boy problems,” Chanyeol huffs out a smile, sure it looks fake. “Not much else.”

“Oh,” the syllables escape Kyungsoo’s lips, “you wanna talk about him?”

There’s silence.

 _He probably won’t remember anyway,_ he thinks, and makes a decision he's not sure he'll regret later.

“He’s perfect,” he starts, voice scraping against his throat. “He looks out for everyone, and has the prettiest eyes.”

The words float between them, and Chanyeol almost thinks Kyungsoo is asleep.

“He can’t eat coriander, and has a bit of a glaring problem, because his eyesight is bad. He means well, though. He always does.”

Kyungsoo hums.

“He always keeps me out of trouble. He’s been there for me since as long as I can remember—I wouldn’t know what to do without him.”

“He sounds amazing,” Kyungsoo mutters. He closes his eyes, fingertips grazing Chanyeol’s arm across the divider of pillows between them. “Why are you crying?”

“He doesn’t love me.” Chanyeol blinks the tears away. “Not like I love him.”

Chanyeol closes his eyes too, the lull of sleep too powerful for his drained heart to avoid.

“But that’s okay. As long as I’m by his side, it’s going to be okay.”

He’s slipping into nothingness when he hears it.

“He doesn’t deserve you, Yeol. Let him go.”

“I’ll try, Soo. I promise.”

Much, much, later, because Kyungsoo is hard to let go of, in between kisses with other girls, Chanyeol thinks he succeeds.

chanyeol is wrong

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not to be foreboding or anything but if yall got tissues on hand...im just saying it would be Very Helpful 
> 
> [a very special thank u to mimi!!! thank u for listening and putting up with my dots, ily]


	3. summer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sana okay lang kayo kase tuloy tuloy na to good luck nalang 
> 
> translation: if u think ure ready for this chap trust me you’re not

Chanyeol goes on a date. 

Minatozaki Sana is from his arts class, paired to Chanyeol over a photography project. She is nothing like Jihye.

Her hands are impossibly soft, the scent surrounding them when she’d check on their photos smelling like bubblegum. 

She carries her own edge—her softness so glaring it could cut, so subtle you had no choice but to notice it.

Her hair never seems to be perfectly neat, probably messy on purpose, and her hands are always busy. 

“She likes you,” Jongdae says, an engineering major he made fast friends with last semester. 

Sana asks Chanyeol out, shy and quiet.

They go to dinner the same day, and end up drinking enough wine for Sana to take him back to her place off-campus. 

Enough for Chanyeol to shove down his longing for someone else.

They don’t make it to her room.

Chanyeol pins her to the wall, moaning low in her mouth. Her teeth bite and nip and suck, and she ends up straddling him on the couch, Sana on top for a while. 

Chanyeol flips them over, continuing what she started, whispering hotly in her ear as she comes, and he follows her not long after. 

Sana takes Chanyeol’s phone and calls hers with it. “You’re a distraction,” she says, shocking Chanyeol into silence. “I’m the same to you, aren’t I?” 

When Chanyeol nods mutely, she smiles.

“Let’s act like it.” 

The make-out session afterward is slow and lazy, Chanyeol breaking away first.

Sana tells him to call her whenever they need each other, but the wine isn't as effective anymore.

Chanyeol deletes her number. 

It’s almost seven in the morning, and Baekhyun is closing the door to their dorm. 

When he sees Chanyeol, no doubt reeking of women’s perfume and sex, his lip curls. 

“There’s no winning with you.” 

“Good morning to you too?”

Baekhyun shakes his head, disappointment lacing his voice. “Good luck, Chanyeol.” 

He opens the door, and Kyungsoo is there, looking like he tried to stay up all night and gave up halfway. 

He’s sleeping on the couch, earphones dangling to the floor, hand curled around a book—and it’s the oddest thing about the whole scene, because Kyungsoo rarely ever read books.

When Chanyeol leans in to investigate, he sees a name scribbled at the corner. 

_Kim Junmyeon_

The letters are smudged, small and insignificant, but they feel like a sharp slap to the face. 

“Yeol?” Kyungsoo stirs. He props himself up on elbows, looking soft and disheveled. “Where have you been—is that lipstick?” 

It takes a minute of sleepy eyes roving around his form—the messy hair, the loose threads of his shirt, the scent of lotion—for Kyungsoo’s face to fall.

“Sana,” Chanyeol quips. “From Arts 101.” 

“Sana,” Kyungsoo parrots, voice a careful stretch to the silence around them. “That was quick. Thought you’d be hung up over Jihye more.” 

“It was a fling.” 

Chanyeol can’t get the sight of Junmyeon’s name outside his head. He must have been something to get Kyungsoo to borrow it. 

It feels like a stamp—a new reminder that however much he tried to get Kyungsoo back, his possessiveness would help no one.

It would be useless. 

He suddenly wants to make Kyungsoo jealous, and the thought strikes him out just as fast as he comes up with it.

“It’s nothing, we just had sex, she’s really pretty, you should see her—”

 _Shut up_ , a voice pleads. _Please shut the fuck up_. 

“Yeah? I'm sure she's amazing.” Kyungsoo swallows, eyes shining as he brings his head down. He’s fiddling with something in his hands. 

“She hates coriander. Like you.”

Chanyeol doesn't even know where it came from; just that he'd seen her cringe at some dish during dinner and was reminded of how Kyungsoo was cuter. 

“We share good taste then.”

In the same moment, his throat hollows out in a noiseless sigh, defeat written all over the lines in his body. 

Kyungsoo snaps his head up, and the smile he forces on has Chanyeol feeling like the biggest asshole in the world.

“Kyungsoo—”

“Guess what you missed?” Kyungsoo cuts him off, words too fast, too light.

“I wanted it to be a surprise, but I guess it still is to you, I got admitted into the program—the one in Japan." 

He lets the blanket—Baekhyun’s—fall from his hips as he stands, revealing a polo and chinos.

He must have come straight from wherever he was to the dorms. 

"I wasn’t sure if I’d accept it, but Dad made a show of having a bad son that didn’t appreciate his efforts to earn money for him—you know how he is."

The words float in the air, cementing their place—carrying a wedge between them. 

“How long?” Chanyeol whispers. His hands have gone cold. “And Japan? When are you leaving?”

“Six months. We had a whole summer to look for apartments around the school, and I won’t be alone.” 

Kyungsoo’s fake smile is still there. 

“We’ve gotten some other Koreans that wanna stay there too.”

Chanyeol doesn’t know what to ask first. 

“A whole summer,” he repeats, an undercurrent of hurt travelling along his skin. “You couldn't say anything to me? At all?” 

Nothing.

Not one mention of it to Chanyeol.

And it’s going to be Chanyeol’s fault, because the answer will be _you were with Jihye._

“When are you leaving?” he asks, before Kyungsoo can answer and introduce a new thing to claw at Chanyeol's chest.

“In three weeks.” 

The words are a bomb between them. 

“That’s—" Chanyeol can’t collect himself. "That’s an awfully short time. You couldn’t have told me earlier?” 

The betrayal Chanyeol feels in his gut is different.

Sharper.

Stronger. 

“No.” Kyungsoo stands up, making his way to the door. Short and simple, only one syllable, but Chanyeol can hear the frustration in it.

“You’re the same. I don’t own you, right? I can't tell you to not go on a date just because I wanted to share the news of me having the opportunity to go after my dreams with you." 

Kyungsoo's accusations hit home, and guilt mixes alongside the anger in Chanyeol's gut.

"I can’t dictate what you can and can’t do." Kyungsoo grips the straps of his backpack. “You’ve been reminding me of that a lot lately."

It's like the application exam all over again, only worse. So much worse. 

"It goes the same way, Yeol. It also means you’re not entitled to anything going on in my life.” 

The implications strike a chord in him, has the thing inside him shrinking back, back, back—

—far from the attacks of Kyungsoo’s words. 

Kyungsoo seems to realize it at the same time he does. “Yeol,” he starts, but Chanyeol cuts him off. 

All Chanyeol knows is he wants it to hurt.

He wants it to hurt as much as the knowledge of Kyungsoo essentially saying the friendship he’d treasured, the one he valued over his own feelings, _over himself_ , was worthless. 

Which meant he was worthless too. 

“I’m only sorry I care too much about you,” he spits, the words wild, uncontrolled, not his own. “You don’t deserve it.” 

The moment he says it, when they've settled in the air, regret, strong and powerful, washes over him in a wave.

"Wait,” Chanyeol tries a second later, probably a second too late, the thing inside him tearing and scraping, wailing at his stupidity.

He watches Kyungsoo step back, lip trembling.

There’s raw hurt shining in his eyes, alongside the silent tears that have already started to spill over. 

Too far.

Chanyeol had gone too far, and they both knew it.

“ _Shit_ , Soo, no, wait, I didn’t—“

“I agree.” Kyungsoo whispers, hand on the doorknob. His throat bobs once, twice. “I don’t think I deserve you either.”

“Wait,” he says, willing Kyungsoo to look at him, to stop so he can start apologizing, so he can take the words back. “Soo, please—“

But the door is already clicking shut, the sound of Kyungsoo's hurried footsteps wrenching the rug from under Chanyeol’s feet. 

He sinks to the floor, slow, agonized. 

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he’s reminded of how he didn’t say congratulations. 

When Chanyeol and Kyungsoo were sixteen, they’d fought. 

Chanyeol has already forgotten what they’d fought over, or who was at fault. Just that it had taken a week for the both of them to go back to normal. 

He cried the night of their fight.

And then he’d cried even more when he remembered that it was Kyungsoo that taught him how to be unapologetic for his tendencies to be emotional.

Kyungsoo had slept over, Yoora and Chanyeol’s mother more than too accommodating, and Chanyeol was a mess of emotions in his arms. 

This time, it feels like it takes forever—it feels like there is no chance for Chanyeol to take his words back. 

To the outside world, though, it takes two weeks. 

Jongdae opens the door, letting him step inside.

He doesn’t spend five seconds in their shared kitchen before he hears a click, Kyungsoo stepping out of his room, Jongdae stepping into the city. 

They’re alone. 

“I’m sorry,” Chanyeol murmurs, voice already splintering. Kyungsoo doesn’t move, only stares at him with dark circles under his eyes.

“I’m such an idiot—I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, I— _god, I promise I didn’t_ —“

Chanyeol's face crumples, and Kyungsoo closes their distance, arms around him, rubbing circles into his side.

“Congratulations,” he mutters into Kyungsoo’s shoulder. “I’m so proud of you, Soo. You’re amazing. You’re only going to get better in Japan. I was just shocked you didn’t tell me. I’m sorry. I'm such an asshole—I—"

"Hey." Kyungsoo smiles at him. 

"I should’ve told you earlier. If there’s anybody entitled to everything going on in my life, it’s you, I promise."

His smile is fake—no— _patient_. 

Which makes it so much worse.

"It’s just—I wasn’t sure if I was going at all, and then school’s been crazy with the requirements and papers.”

"Don't forget about me while you’re there," Chanyeol ekes out, small and wounded. "I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Sana." 

The mention of her name makes Kyungsoo’s face shift into impassiveness, closed off, unreadable. 

“It’s okay,” Kyungsoo says, “I’m sure she’s nice. I just didn’t think you’d move on from Jihye so soon.” 

“We had sex—it’s—she’s hot, that’s all it is—”

This time, when the voice tells him to shut up, Chanyeol listens. 

“I forgive you,” Kyungsoo says, stepping back, taking his arms and comfort and assurance with him, and Chanyeol wants to weep.

“It’s alright. We’re okay now.”

Chanyeol can’t bring himself to look Kyungsoo in the eyes. Reassuring him when he didn't deserve it was such a Kyungsoo thing to do. 

“Look.” Kyungsoo takes his wrist, fingers rough with callouses. “How about you come pick me up after training later? They’re throwing a party for me. I promised I’d train under the dojos in Japan for them.”

An offering. 

Chanyeol takes it—he'd take anything Kyungsoo would give him.

They go to more than just parties—Chanyeol brings Kyungsoo out to the city, using his absence of six months as an excuse to spoil him to dinner dates overlooking the Seoul Tower, or just begging him to spend time at the tennis court, in the spot they’ve always stayed on top of the bleachers. 

They do more with their other friends—watch Baekhyun fire at the shooting range, go to Sehun’s swimming matches, attend Junmyeon’s gallery tours. 

They go back to where they’ve gone before, and Chanyeol can almost pretend they’re okay, that everything is the way it once was. 

But he knows they’re not. 

And maybe, just maybe, a small part of him doesn’t want them to. 

“Chanyeol.” 

The night is cold, monsoons of summer bringing on the promise of rain.

It’s two nights before Kyungsoo leaves for Japan, and they’ve both just finished dinner with their families. 

It was Kyungsoo that requested it, a small occasion, not manning the kitchen for once and spending all day beside Chanyeol. 

Chanyeol leans against the gate, eyes flicking towards him. “What is it?”

They’ve gotten over their fight, and Chanyeol is hoping for an easy transition for Kyungsoo’s departure.

There’s already a folder on his phone for memes to send to Kyungsoo while he’s there—

“Let’s not contact each other.”

Seconds pass by, and Chanyeol is still convinced he hasn't heard properly. 

“What?” 

“Let’s not contact each other,” Kyungsoo repeats, "I don’t want to hear from you.” 

Chanyeol doesn't understand—it happens slowly, starting at the tips of his fingers, finally wrapping a fist around his heart. 

“You’re doing that thing again,” Chanyeol whispers. He doesn’t know what 'thing' he’s talking about. “This is a bad joke, Soo.”

“I’m not doing anything. I’m serious.” Kyungsoo shakes his head, like he’s trying to get a hold of himself. “It’s not your fault.”

“What did I do?" Chanyeol asks. 

Somehow, Chanyeol can't question it—

—can't question the finality in his best friend's decisions, because he knows Kyungsoo isn't twisted enough to do this half-heartedly.

Somehow, Chanyeol knows it's his fault, and it's pulling the world from under his feet. 

Everything he’s been so afraid of—everything he’d worked to avoid, all that holding back, all that heartache— _all for nothing._

Kyungsoo is cutting him off. 

Which was supposed to be impossible. 

"Tell me whose fault it is," Chanyeol says, desperate, “so we can fix it, if there’s something to fix—”

“It’s mine.” Kyungsoo looks up at him, and this time, it’s not just a split-second of emotion. 

His mouth trembles, like he’s trying not to cry, but it’s his eyes—those beautiful wide eyes—that shine, vulnerability swimming in them; regret and dread and guilt.

“It's mine," Kyungsoo repeats. "I’m sorry you have to be dragged into it.” 

Chanyeol can't believe it.

This was never to supposed to happen.

All those years—

“You’re not making sense. You have to realize you're not making sense.” 

“It’s for the both of us," Kyungsoo says. "I swear it is. When I come back, we can talk again. I promise. You have to trust me, Chanyeol.” 

“Yeol.” It’s only one syllable, but his voice catches all the same. “You always call me Yeol.”

Kyungsoo isn't listening. 

“I’m sorry I’m such a coward.” Kyungsoo is looking the smallest he’s ever looked. “You’ll know why soon.” 

“Just tell me now,” Chanyeol pleads. “You promised nothing would change. You did a whole speech about it. You said we’d always be best friends. What happened, Soo?” 

In front of him, their friendship is being cut, bit by bit, years of memories and laughter serving to bring him down lower, with only the night as witness.

In the back of Chanyeol’s mind, he admits that it’s poetic. 

The stars have seen him discover love before, all those years ago. 

Let them see Chanyeol discover heartbreak. 

“Nothing happened, Chanyeol.”

 _"Will you fucking stop saying my name like that_ —”

But Kyungsoo’s hand cups his jaw, making him freeze, the words dying out in his throat. 

Kyungsoo’s lips land on his cheek, lingering for a moment and only a moment, and the thing inside him is shattering into a million pieces, because Chanyeol understands—and he wishes he didn't—that it's a goodbye. 

He pulls back, and Kyungsoo’s eyes are so wide—swollen and red, he hasn’t even cried yet; but they’re beautiful. 

Chanyeol suspects Kyungsoo always will be. 

Chanyeol steps away, a little too heavy, a little too shocked. He might as well have spit on Kyungsoo, with how the younger boy flinches.

One second, Kyungsoo is there, and the next he’s gone—the bang of metal on metal as the gate closes the only thing Chanyeol can register. 

“Wake up.” 

Chanyeol doesn’t move. 

It’s been three days since Kyungsoo made for Japan.

Three days since he stormed the street going up to their houses, hours earlier than Kyungsoo's flight, determined to repair what was never supposed to be broken, and seeing Kyungsoo’s father snipping at the basil plants Kyungsoo had left behind.

Three days since his heart had called out to Kyungsoo’s plants, proof of him, like everything else was, and Kyungsoo’s father had told him he was gone. 

His flight changed, the old man had said, and Chanyeol couldn’t get past the impossible tightness in his throat. 

He was supposed to confess. 

He was supposed to make his love clear, the things Kyungsoo had done that night a jarring guide to what he needed to do. 

But Kyungsoo had gone—now walking on ground Chanyeol’s never touched before. 

There will be no traces of him where Kyungsoo is. 

Not like Chanyeol, who sees his best friend—not ex-best friend, _never_ ex-best friend—every step he takes. 

“Wake up,” Baekhyun repeats. “Come on, Yeol.” 

He hates that name. 

So much. 

“Don’t call me that." 

There’s silence, and he thinks Baekhyun has left, so he buries his face in his pillow. 

“Kyungsoo’s father came for you,” he says, and Chanyeol’s eyes snap open. 

Kyungsoo’s father is dressed like how he and Kyungsoo always used to tease—a polo and dark-washed jeans, his black frames drawing harsh squares on his face. 

But there are older lines on his face now. Chanyeol knows them, grew up with them, just as much as Kyungsoo surely knew the lines on Chanyeol's mother's. 

He hands Chanyeol a receipt, dated December of last year. 

His name is scribbled on the top right corner in Kyungsoo's neat handwriting. 

All that’s left is a number, 612, and a small print.

_Please present for proof of purchase._

“He said to give this to you when you finally forgot about him, but everybody—except the both of you, apparently—knows that will never happen.” 

Chanyeol swallows. 

He doesn’t reply, he can’t even think properly—his attention in his classes has been frazzled, and this is no different. 

“You’re too special to each other for that to happen.”

The words cut through the fog inside his head, just enough to examine the name of the shop.

He doesn’t need to for long, because it’s the same one he’d been dragging Kyungsoo to for the better part of last year. 

“What do I do with this then,” Chanyeol croaks, before remembering who he’s talking to, “sir?” 

“Find out what it means. Before he left, he said I was the only one that knew about it. You and your friend know now.”

There are hands on his, light and gentle.

“I’m sorry for what my son did. I don’t know much of what happened. But if there’s one thing you boys have proved, over and over—”

—he drops something in his palm, and there’s a bracelet, wooden beads, varnish faded with age, clinking together, and Chanyeol shuts his eyes at the weight that shoots through him—

“—it’s that you two always seem to make it.”

Only Baekhyun sees him sink down on their couch, a long while after Kyungsoo’s father leaves with a soft click on the door.

He folds into the cushions slowly, like a wounded animal. 

He crumples the receipt in his hands. 

He throws the bracelet, one he and Kyungsoo had gotten from each other on a field trip to Jeju, back when they were in high school, in the trash. 

He ignores Baekhyun’s questions. 

When Baekhyun reports to him how Kyungsoo is doing, he ignores that too. 

  
  


_you two always seem to make it_

It’s cleaning day, a solid two weeks after Kyungsoo’s father’s visit, and the receipt and bracelet have mysteriously (or not) made their way back to Chanyeol’s bed. 

The bracelet is cleaned, absent of the layer of dust coating its beads, and the receipt is smoothed out. 

Under the two trinkets, though, is a book, the sight familiar and bittersweet. 

_Kim Junmyeon_ , it says on the top corner, and instead of jealousy, this time, it’s sadness that pangs through him. 

Chanyeol gingerly picks it up, the cover encased in a piece of cloth. 

_The Promise of The Seasons._

A bookmark falls from the pages—it’s another receipt, this time for succulents under care of The Wish Tree.

It was Kyungsoo’s favorite shop to get plants from. They’d even made friends with the owners, Seulgi and Joohyun. 

On the pages it was stuck between, there’s a small chunk of text missing, the rips on the paper wobbly enough to guarantee that whoever did it was sure to be careful. 

Chanyeol has his hands on his hips, glaring at Baekhyun.

“I threw these away for a reason.”

Baekhyun looks up from the countertop he's wiping down. “They unthrew themselves for a reason.” 

“And what reason is that?” 

“The best one,” Baekhyun replies. The look he levels at Chanyeol is determined.

“The reason being me, obviously. Byun Baekhyun. Get in the car, loser. We’re going shopping.” 

Chanyeol forgets how to breathe. 

“You remembered,” he mutters, too low for anyone else but himself to hear.

Kyungsoo remembered.

It’s almost been a year since Chanyeol talked about the guitar at all—a year of recording deals and learning about contracts and being too swamped with responsibilities to worry about buying it. 

A year since that morning up on the beach. 

Coming from the back of the counter is a brand new acoustic guitar, shining and polished, lacquered base glinting under the glare of the fluorescent lights.

Sooyoung gestures to a color palette, and offers a change of color, if that's what he wanted. 

“It’s perfect,” Chanyeol whispers, almost reverent as he slides his hand along the frets, strings looking to bite into his skin with the prospect of hours of practice. 

“Glad 612’s out of our hands. There’s a complete set of picks in the pocket and you just come over if you want new strings.”

There’s something about it that catches Chanyeol’s attention.

“Are the strings free?” 

“For you, they are,” Sooyoung winks. “Kyungsoo helped us with the plants part of our house—it’s the least we can do.”

“Wait! Hey!” 

They’re halfway to the car when a girl, blond hair fluttering around her face, stops them. 

Seungwan, Chanyeol remembers. 

She liked Kyungsoo more than Chanyeol—chatted with him more whenever Kyungsoo plopped himself down on the floor to wait out Chanyeol’s window shopping. 

She shoves an envelope towards him. 

_It’s probably too late to say this, but I love you._

It's been two weeks since they'd gotten the guitar.

Two weeks of staring at the envelope, abandoned on his study table, until Baekhyun had threatened to burn it by holding one of his expensive scented candles to its edge. 

_I don’t know when Seungwan will give you this; I don’t know if you’ll see this at all. But it helps to write it down, helps me to concentrate._

_And if you_ are _reading this_ —

— _I love you._

_You understand, right?_

_You know what I’m trying to say._

_This is the explanation you wanted, the night before I left._

Chanyeols panics as wetness lands on the letters, the ink bleeding onto the paper.

He finds a shirt, dabbing gently until the moisture is absorbed, movements mechanical as Kyungsoo’s handwriting winks under the lamp beside their couch. 

The thing inside him, kept in the dark for so long, is resurfacing—and it can’t get used to the light fast enough. 

_When we were seventeen, I fell in love with you—_

_—but I didn’t believe it at first._

_It was on my birthday, the one you planned behind my back._

_You know those ice-fishing videos we used to watch? We laughed because they looked so stupid, waddling so they could get to the center of frozen lakes._

_They’d take care to measure the ice, because you could be safe one minute and underwater the next._

_That’s what it was like for me._

_I saw you look so nervous before we went through the gates, and I almost tripped on my own two feet when I suddenly thought that I wanted to kiss your frown away._

_You hugged me that night, up at the rooftop, and slept beside me._ _Do you know how much it only got worse from there?_

_I was so afraid._

_I didn't know what to do._

“Do Kyungsoo,” Chanyeol chokes out, smiling the slightest bit amidst the tears running down his cheeks, “you fucking idiot.”

_Through the years, it was me you went to, when you had your eye on someone you liked._

_It was me you turned to for advice, and it was me you turned to for comfort._

_You talked to me about everything you liked about them._

_It sounded stupid then, and it sounds stupid now, but I wrote this much already_ — _I might as well_ —

— _I’d imagine you talking about me like that._

 _I’d imagine you being happy like that_ _because of me, and only me; I’d imagine being the reason you turned to one of our friends for love advice._

_But you didn’t._

_You always went to me._

_And you were always so loud to announce we were best friends._

_You’d mention it whenever you could, even had us making nicknames we would still use so many years later._

_So I accepted it_ — _the role you gave me._

 _It wasn’t hard_ ; _you were amazing and bright and perfect._

_Of course I wanted you to be my best friend._

_But something happened, when we were nineteen._

_We were on top of that ridiculous rock, do you remember?_

_You woke me up to watch the sunrise and I spent half an hour helping you to where you wanted to sit, all because your stupid ass thought the view up there was better._

_You brought your jacket, and I didn’t have mine, and I was going to freeze, so you put yours around me._

_I remember it so clearly_ — _how everything looked sharper, and how everything just broke_ _when you stared at me while I was taking pictures of the sun_. 

_You were smiling, so very beautiful, and it was then that I knew_ — _I didn’t deserve you._

Chanyeol shuts his eyes, taking a deep breath in.

The yearning inside him doesn't attack this time—

—only curls around its nest of wasted chances.

_So I forced myself to get used to it._

_The love I had for you, I changed_ — _so that it looked platonic, something that said I valued our friendship just as much as you did._

 _For a while, it was enough_ —

— _because even if I couldn’t be special to you in the way I wanted, at least I could be special in the way you allowed me to be._

_For a while, I made you happy, and that was all that mattered._

They were so stupid. So, incredibly, stupid. 

_But you found other people to make you happy in ways I couldn’t._

_I forced myself to get used to that too_ — _and it was so hard, Yeol._

_I discovered that even if it looked platonic, the love I had only grew to hate the role you gave me._

_I didn’t know how to manage it_ — _I’d distance myself, but you always looked for me, and in your looking for me, I hated you too, because you gave me hope._

_You should know_ —

— _that I failed._

_I failed to do everything that seemed so easy for you to do, and I think that convinced me even further that I had no chance with you._

_Back when we were younger and only a little bit more stupid, I thought I could handle it._

_Now though, I know I’m wrong._

_I’m hoping you understand._

_I’m hoping, when I come back, we can have a meal together, and I won’t think about how adorable you are, or how nice your fingers would look wrapped around mine._

_I'm hoping I won't wish as much as I used to—I'm hoping that I'll look at you and won't wish we'd have kissed at least once._

_Like how true best friends should be._

_I was too much of a coward to say it to your face, and I still am, using a letter to confess when I’m thousands of miles away from your rejection._

_When I come back, I won't love you anymore._

_Not like this._

_I promise._

_But_ _until then_ —

— _I love you, Park Chanyeol._

_I always have._

~~_I think I always will._ ~~

The paper flutters down to the floor, sobs building an ache in his jaw and tearing his throat apart. 

Chanyeol curls in on himself, slow and small, the sheer magnitude of Kyungsoo’s words hitting him one by one—and he can’t breathe with the knowledge of it, can’t bring himself to accept that the chance for them to be happy was _right there_ —

It's during the summer, when the seasons have only started to shift, that Park Chanyeol breaks. 

November 27 comes, and he invites Sana to his birthday. 

“I don’t feel like being a distraction anymore,” she says, voice crackling along the line. 

“Neither do I.” Chanyeol smiles against his phone. 

He’d been busy—drowning himself in music, even securing a job at a local radio station as a DJ.

He quickly became noticed because of his voice, and he’s already had to do ASMR sessions per request of their listeners more than once. 

Basketball is a distraction in itself—their meets are chaotic, and his teammates ask where Kyungsoo is. 

He’d answer the _where,_ but not the _how is he,_ not the _is he coming back for Christmas._

“I don’t know," he'd say without malice, "he hasn’t talked to me ever since he went there.” 

People would flinch, mutter their apologies at what they assumed was a falling-out.

He'd discovered just how much people thought of them, Kyungsoo and Chanyeol, Chanyeol and Kyungsoo—Do Not Separate—now silent, cut apart. 

It’s become a fact to him, and he’s learned to live with it, even easier than when he lived with the idea of Kyungsoo not wanting him back. 

Kyungsoo makes it to the Korean channels once. 

On a cooking show—looking healthy, maybe even glowing, but there’s a dull sheen to his eyes that Chanyeol sees, even if only through the screen. 

He records the episode and plays it back whenever missing his best friend hits him especially hard.

But other than that—Kyungsoo fades to a fixed idea in Chanyeol’s head, giving him determination and comfort. 

Chanyeol listens to Baekhyun’s updates, participating, almost like a ghost, in their jokes, but he doesn’t actively call him out. 

Their Line conversation is now almost six months old, Chanyeol’s sticker repeating itself over and over.

Chanyeol moves on—but he doesn’t let go. 

“How do you feel about being a friend, Sana?”

The first day of December is when Kyungsoo returns from Japan. Instead of the beach house, their car goes through traffic so Chanyeol and his sister can come pick him up.

When he sees Kyungsoo at the airport, he waits for a few moments before calling him over. 

Kyungsoo is in all-black; an ensemble he uses when he’s set to prioritize comfort over anything else.

Black pants and a black shirt under a black coat, topped by a black beanie. 

They make his white earphones and gold thin-frame glasses stand out.

His hair’s gotten longer—so much so that when he removes his beanie, it gathers in his hands before falling handsomely around his face.

Even with such a simple outfit, the sight of him still manages to squeeze at Chanyeol's chest. 

“Do Kyungsoo!” he shouts. 

Chanyeol watches his head snap up, obviously surprised. 

It’s strange—how his full name sounds now.

Kyungsoo overcomes his shock and waves towards them, a relieved smile on his face. 

It’s the one that turns his lips into a heart, warm and kind and polite, and Chanyeol feels a familiar ache consume him. 

In those six months, Chanyeol has let his yearning get used to the surface, and so it doesn’t bite as much when Kyungsoo calls to it.

“Chanyeol.”

His breath comes out in a silent puff as arms encase his chest, and he has no choice but to push Kyungsoo away. 

The hurt in his eyes is jarring to see. 

Chanyeol didn’t expect to cause it so soon. 

“I couldn’t breathe,” he explains, opening his arms again, and the younger boy gladly steps into them.

“Have they been feeding you steroids at those dojos or something?” 

It’s been so long since he’d heard Kyungsoo’s laugh, and it’s so easy—how they go back to their old space, and it’s like Kyungsoo’s only been gone a day instead of half a year, like nothing has changed. 

The yearning in him keens, deftly slicing through unresolved scars, because Kyungsoo is acting like he said he would in his letter. 

Like his best friend. 

Like what he believed Chanyeol wanted. 

Like he’d succeeded. 

“I didn’t know you were coming.” Kyungsoo’s voice is rough, probably from the flight. “Where’s Baek? And Nini?”

“They—” Chanyeol licks his lips, “—they said they’d see you next week. I missed you, Soo.” 

Kyungsoo hums, a smaller smile on his lips as he turns to greet Yoora.

On the ride home, Chanyeol asks anything and everything about Japan. 

Kyungsoo indulges him all throughout the trip, entertaining descriptions and rambling character profiles of people Chanyeol has only met through his rare cooking broadcasts.

They laugh and joke, almost as if there hasn’t been six months of dead air between them, and Chanyeol can’t help the tightness rising up in his throat whenever they tease about missing one another. 

They don’t bring up the night before he left. 

At some point, Yoora remarks that it’s the first time she’s seen Chanyeol that lively in a long while, and the both of them pretend they don’t hear it.

Chanyeol sees Kyungsoo’s eyes go back, over and over, to his wrist, where the bracelet sits, wooden beads faded and innocent.

“You went to Jeju?”

Kyungsoo is leaning against Baekhyun’s doorway, shirt rumpled and dipping past his collarbones. 

It’s been three days since he’d come back from Japan, and Chanyeol had invited Kyungsoo over to their dorm.

He'd thought Baekhyun might've wanted to spend time with him, but the moment Baekhyun confirmed it was only going to be the three of them, he’d bolted, only coming back to leave Kyungsoo’s overnight bag, courtesy of his father. 

The afternoon had started out cautious, all agreements and how-have-you-beens. 

Chanyeol had caught Kyungsoo up on his life, told him about his job, his music, the team.

He told him about Sana when Kyungsoo asked, though carefully, emphasizing on how Sana liked Dahyun from Theater. 

The awkward silences wouldn’t leave them alone, but it seemed like Kyungsoo was just as set on ignoring them as Chanyeol was. 

“You’re awake.” Chanyeol says, scolding.

The piano chords that have been playing in his mind go silent.

An idea wouldn't leave him alone, and so he'd ended up in their shared living room, his composition notebook strewn near his feet.

“It’s 2 in the morning. Go back to sleep.”

Kyungsoo only gives him a look. 

He ignores Chanyeol, padding over to where he is. His presence is overwhelming—like he's meeting him for the first time, and it has Chanyeol noticing everything—

—his eyes, so dark they're almost black in the weak lamplight—

—his hair, slightly sheared on one side, mint shampoo the same as always—

—his warmth, and Chanyeol knows that's what he missed the most: Kyungsoo's solidity beside him, the safety in his silence— 

With a sigh, Kyungsoo slumps against him, arms hugging his knees. Even after being without it for so long, his weight is still familiar.

Without meaning to, Chanyeol pushes back, leaning against Kyungsoo's shoulders, like his mind might have gotten used to his absence, but his body hasn't. 

It’s easy now—Chanyeol recognizes the longing whispering in his ear. 

For six months, Chanyeol’s known what to do. He'd prepared himself the best he could, whether Kyungsoo had succeeded in his plans or not.

But now that the moment is here, his heart is growing erratic, sending a thrum of doubt through his veins. 

Kyungsoo reaches for his wrist, fingers thin and delicate. There are small scars in his hands—new ones. 

“Do they really still sell these things?” Kyungsoo asks, tracing the designs on the beads. 

There's a glint in his eyes, and Chanyeol knows he's remembering their field trip—

—the one where he and Chanyeol had split with their tour group to go on their own agendas, sightseeing and shopping and eating.

When they ended up at the hands of their very stressed chaperones, it was Kyungsoo's spotless reputation that allowed their "we got lost" excuse to save them. 

“I wouldn’t know.”

He turns his hand over, Kyungsoo's fingers following the movement.

“Because I haven’t gone to Jeju since that field trip. This is the one you got me.” 

Ever since he’d read Kyungsoo’s letter, Chanyeol hasn’t taken it off.

He’d developed a habit of turning to the bracelet to ground him, its wooden feel almost like a cheap replacement to Kyungsoo’s presence. 

There’s silence, nothing but the drone of the A/C and ticking of the clock to keep them company.

In return, he takes Kyungsoo's wrist, turning it over, running his thumb across the new map of scars in his hands. 

They're still slender—still graceful.

Chanyeol allows a second to solidify in the space between them before he speaks. 

“It’s probably too late to say this,” he confesses, "but I love you.” 

It feels right to use Kyungsoo’s words. When they finally register, Kyungsoo snatches his hand back, turning to Chanyeol with a panicked look in his eyes. 

“When we were seventeen, I fell in love with you.”

“No,” Kyungsoo whispers, a low, broken sound.

Chanyeol watches him piece everything together. 

“We were up on the rooftop, and I discovered I loved you on your birthday. It was cold as fuck, do you remember?” 

“Stop,” Kyungsoo tries, desperate.

The receipt, the guitar, the letter.

Piece by piece.

"Please, it's taken me so long—" 

“And it kept following me, everywhere I went. When you’d laugh. When we’d walk home eating takoyaki. When you held my hands. I was scared too, Soo. I didn’t know what to do either.”

"Yeol," Kyungsoo shakes his head, like he's trying to wake up. “Don't do this to me.”

The nickname is familiar, welcome. It’s the first time he’s ever heard it from Kyungsoo’s lips in six months, and it’s never sounded so fitting.

“We were falling together, but we kept thinking we’d lose each other. The sunrise up at the beach. All those touches, all those gestures, we could’ve had it, Soo."

The yearning has begun to fill his throat, the what-could-have-beens running wild in the space between them, and Chanyeol almost chokes on a sob.

“I confessed to you when we were twenty, two years ago, the night you said you were gay. You said you didn’t deserve me because I thought you wouldn’t love me back.” 

Kyungsoo's voice is so, so, small. He's been so quiet. Like he's forgotten how to breathe.

"Holy shit," he whispers, "that was real?” 

“Yes.” Chanyeol licks his lips. “Yes, I promise. You were so sure in your letter—so sure that what you did would solve everything. But you’re wrong.”

With shaky hands, he takes Kyungsoo’s phone. 

Kyungsoo lets him, watching as Chanyeol opens up the case. There—just like he thought it would be—a stray jumble of letters, the words faded, the paper so soft it might crumble at any minute. 

Everything matched: from the tint it had to the careful tears along its sides. 

“The promise of the seasons is simple in itself,” Chanyeol reads, “promising the permanence of change."

Chanyeol had been looking at the passage _for months_ , going crazy with the possible implications of what it meant.

It eventually came to him when his hands cruised along the wooden beads of his bracelet. 

“You read this when you start to doubt your decisions. You read this when you look back at the night you cut me off.”

And Kyungsoo—

—strong, calm, secretly breakable Kyungsoo—

—is looking at him like he’s watching his deepest secret unravel before his eyes. 

"The words mean something, but not much," Chanyeol continues. "Just like my bracelet. You read it when you miss me."

There is no room for doubt in the way Chanyeol says it, loud and clear.

"You read it because it reminds you that even if you cut me off, we’ll always have a chance of going back to the way we were."

His throat is beginning to close up.

"Because deep down, you knew I loved you too. You _must've known,_ Soo. You must have.”

Kyungsoo is staring at him, disbelief in his eyes, and it isn't enough to drown out the roaring in Chanyeol's ears. 

“I’m dreaming,” Kyungsoo huffs out. “I’m dreaming and I'll wake up soon—” 

Chanyeol forces him to look.

His eyes are so fearful—so afraid of rejection even now, even after everything’s Chanyeol said, and his heart squeezes at how _Kyungsoo_ that is—to always be careful, ready for the worst. 

“Ever since I was seventeen,” Chanyeol mutters, low and steady, “I tried to fall out of love with you."

Chanyeol lets his hand cup a side of his jaw, and Kyungsoo goes even stiffer against him. 

"I failed too, Kyungsoo. I failed to do what seemed so easy for you—I couldn’t let you disappear on me for long."

The yearning burns into ash.

It isn’t needed anymore. 

"I love you, please believe me. In all the ways you want me to love you. I promise. _I promise.”_

“Yeol,” Kyungsoo’s voice _breaks_ , and Chanyeol knows. He understands.

He reads everything Kyungsoo doesn't say—and translates it perfectly. 

He doesn’t know who leans in first, just that their first kiss is a simple press of their closed lips, tentative and new and shy. 

When they go in for another one, Kyungsoo’s hand closes around his neck, and it's so much deeper. 

Everything narrows down to this exact moment, from the way Kyungsoo tongue skims the back of his teeth to the way Chanyeol chases his lips when they break apart. 

“Fuck.” There's a look in Kyungsoo's eyes, dazed and suspended in disbelief. His voice is rough already.

“ _Fu_ _ck,_ Chanyeol—I—”

In one smooth motion, Kyungsoo straddles his hips, leaving Chanyeol to think of nothing else but the pressure bearing down on legs, _on his chest_ , because Kyungsoo's hooked his arms behind Chanyeol's neck.

Chanyeol has enough time react to how hot it is before Kyungsoo attacks, raining down on his jaw, his neck, breath fire against his ears. 

They continue like that, until Kyungsoo grunts as he shifts, concern shooting through Chanyeol even as Kyungsoo's hand goes under his shirt. 

“You can ease up on the pressure. I’m not going anywhere."

Chanyeol makes a low noise as he watches Kyungsoo’s eyes change into something darker. 

"You better not." 

There’s a glint in his eyes, and Chanyeol yips as he carries him onto the couch—

—judokas were too smug for their own good—

—and Chanyeol starts to lose his train of thought when fingers ghost across his thighs, the waistband of his briefs, his neck—

“How about I take you somewhere special, babe?” 

Chanyeol laughs, but Kyungsoo's voice, low and hoarse, has something stirring in his gut.

“Where’d you learn how to talk like that?”

"Who cares?"

Kyungsoo captures his lips again, eyes shining. 

“Well, you and I can—hmhm—assume that whatever skills you have were obtained from— _holy shit_ —” 

“You and your big mouth,” Kyungsoo smirks, holding Chanyeol through his thin sweatpants. “I can think of so many other ways it’d be helpful.” 

Chanyeol takes him up on the offer. 

"Wanna know something?"

They're tangled on Chanyeol's double, fresh from the showers. His fingers are tracing circles on Kyungsoo's back.

Kyungsoo hums in his arms, nuzzling his head back into Chanyeol's neck, almost like a cat.

It has him thinking of the amount of times he'd denied Chanyeol skinship throughout the years. 

Ridiculous.

Nevertheless, it opens up a new vault—makes him look more endearing than the sight of him wearing Chanyeol's shirt, the thin material draping over his shoulders. 

"I imagined this more than I imagined us having sex. Just—being close."

His voice is rough. From emotion or from all the moaning Kyungsoo had him do earlier, he isn't sure. 

"When I realized _that_ , I couldn't use the excuse of you going through puberty and being the talk of the online forums anymore. I couldn't go 'oh, it's only because I'm not used to seeing him like this'. It took me out for days."

Chanyeol can imagine Kyungsoo rolling his eyes. “When did you become such a sap?” 

"I was always a sap." He hums. "But it probably got worse when my best friend also became my boyfriend."

Chanyeol presses a kiss to the top of his head, Kyungsoo's mint shampoo the most comforting scent he'd ever encountered.

"Then I became a different kind of sap real quick, especially when he used his unfair judoka strength to make me horny.”

Kyungsoo chuckles, the vibrations sending a hum through Chanyeol's chest.

"Maybe I was just making up for lost time. You ever think about that, sharpshooter?" 

Somehow, his nickname from being their team's point guard reddens his cheeks. 

"Shut up," Chanyeol mutters. "How are you making me blush? I'm twenty-two years old. I hate this." 

The chuckle evolves into a soft laugh.

Kyungsoo taps against Chanyeol’s palm, running his thumb through Chanyeol's knuckles.

Tap.

”I was right.”

Tap tap tap.

”Your hands look really nice wrapped around mine.”

Chanyeol groans, and Kyungsoo turns just to watch his face go full-on red.

Laughing, Kyungsoo kisses his nose, smiling that heart-smile, and Chanyeol can’t help it; he’s laughing too; burrowing into Kyungsoo’s neck, shy and flustered and so, very, happy. 

“Why would you care about lost time anyway?" Chanyeol mutters again, after a while.

Kyungsoo’s words had snagged at him, and he feels like it’s something his boyfriend is genuinely worried about.

"You have forever with me now.” 

Silence—and Chanyeol almost thinks Kyungsoo is asleep, except he hears it; barely a whisper. 

“You're so corny.” 

He hears a new kind of fondness in Kyungsoo's voice—not like the one he'd use to chastise him for being silly or stupid back when they were just friends. 

Maybe the reality of it all will hit Chanyeol in the morning.

That Do Kyungsoo loved him back.

It feels strange—especially when he’s spent so long denying it. 

The night stretches on, and eventually, their breathing starts to even out, but there—Kyungsoo’s voice. 

“Yeol," he slurs, sleep tainting his syllables, and it almost sounds like he’s dreaming. “Please don’t ever leave me.”

He sounds so small.

Chanyeol holds him tighter.

"Never." 

[full transcript from Kim Junmyeon’s book, The Promise of The Seasons, p.61, paragraph 12] 

_the promise of the seasons is simple in itself—_

_promising the permanence of change._

_that even if leaves fall and die,_

_they are replaced by the same tree that loses them,_

_and so it will be as if nothing happened._

_but the tree remembers,_

_for it loves all of its parts—_

_and the cycle will begin again,_ _without fail_ _._

_the tree moves on._

_it rarely ever lets go._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that wraps up my second fic on ao3! i hope i did well! 
> 
> thank you for reading--if you liked the fic, please leave kudos and comments, i'd love to hear from you <3
> 
> special thanks to mod n for organizing this fic fest! thank u for putting up with my procrastinating ass 
> 
> reveals are here, my twt is @mirasolexo!! i plan to post more drabbles stemming from this story on there, i hope you guys look forward to it!


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